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SELECTIONS FROM 

WILLIAM HAZLITT 



EDITED * 

WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

WILL DAVID HOWE 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN INDIANA UNIVERSITY 



'^Food, tvarmth, sleeps and a book; these are all 
I at present ask." — Hazlitt 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 



COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY WILL DAVID HOWE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

913.9 



ML 



GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



h^ 



>CI.A3 5.^723 



To 

R. P. H. 
Best of collaborators 



PREFACE 

This volume gives^ as far as space permits, essays of Hazlitt 
which distinguish him as a critic of painting, of .the drama, of 
books, and of life. If the lover of Hazlitt fails to find here some 
favorite essay, let him take consolation from the fact that the 
present editor has again and again been compelled to omit some 
essay without which at first he thought the volume would be al- 
together incomplete. Though restricted, the selection will, it is 
hoped, introduce the new reader to one of the most interesting 
men and one of the most stimulating critics, one who could write 
truthfully, " I have endeavored to feel what is good and to give 
a reason for the faith that was in me, when necessary and when 
in my power." 

Each of the essays, complete in itself, has been carefully 
printed from the text which was approved by Hazlitt himself. 
Even the spelling and punctuation of the original have been 
scrupulously followed. This will explain certain inconsistencies 
in punctuation and in the spelling, especially of proper names. 

Doubtless Hazlitt, sentimentalist as he was, would have 
smiled at any editor who should attempt to identify his quota- 
tions and to explain his references. However, in the study of 
an essayist it is interesting to know something of the wealth 
of his reading, and it is necessary to explain the allusions which, 
though clear to the reader of his day, are obscure to us of another 
century. 

I desire to express my indebtedness to Mr. A. R. Waller, of 
Cambridge, England, to Mr. J. Rogers Rees, of Salisbury, Eng- 
land, to Professor G. L. Kittredge, of Harvard University, and 



vi SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

to Professor C. T. Winchester, of Wesleyan University, all of 

whom have given most helpful suggestions. Professor Winchester 

has kindly read the entire proof. For their courtesy at all times 

I thank the authorities of the Boston Public Library, the Harvard 

University Library, the Bodleian, the British Museum and the 

Williams Library in London, where I was permitted to read the 

Crabb Robinson manuscript. 

^ , W. D. H. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 

I. Biographical Sketch ix 

II. As Critic of the Drama xli 

III. As Critic of Painting xlvii 

IV. As Critic of Books and Men xlix 

V. As Personal Essayist liv 

VI. Hazlitt's Style Ivii 

VII. The Man Hazlitt Ix 

VIII. Selected Bibliography Ixvi 

A. Works Ixvi 

B. Editions Ixvii 

C. Biography Ixvii 

D. Contemporary Criticism in Magazines . Ixviii 

E. Miscellaneous Criticism Ixviii 

SELECTIONS 

Hamlet i 

On the Periodical Essayists 9 

Character of Mr. Burke 29 

On Poetry in General 35 

On Elizabethan Literature 58 

On the Pleasure of Painting 82 

On Reading Old Books 94 

On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin 107 

On the Fear of Death 115 

vii 



viii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

PAGE 

Ox Living to One's-Self 127 

On the Past and Future ^ . 142 

On Familiar Style 155 

On Going a Journey 163 

My First Acquaintance with Poets 175 

Merry England 197 

Of Persons One would Wish to have Seen . . 212 

On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth . . 228 

On Reading New Books 242 

On Disagreeable People 259 

On a Sun-Dial 274 

On Cant and Hypocrisy 285 

A Farewell to Essay-Writing 298 

The Sick Chamber 308 

NOTES 317 

INDEX 393 



INTRODUCTION 

I. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

It is difficult to think of any ten years which have been richer 
in promise for English literature than the period between 1770 
and 1780. Within that decade were born Wordsworth in 1770, 
Scott in 1 77 1, Coleridge in 1772, Jeffrey in 1773, Southey in 
1774, Lamb in 1775, and Hazlitt in 1778. Of this group, two 
were to be poets who would give new direction to literary work ; 
one was to be the great prose romance writer of our literature, 
if not of the world ; one was to be critic and editor of a great 
magazine ; one was to please by his oriental poetry ; one was 
to be the most beloved of men, the most whimsical of essayists, 
the best letter-writer ; the last was to be one of the most pleas- 
ing and stimulating critics of the theater, of painting, of books, 
and of men. 

William Hazlitt was born on the tenth of April, 1778, at 
Maidstone in Kent. His ancestors on the paternal side were 
of sturdy Dissenter stock who had probably gone over to Ire- 
land from Holland after the time of William of Orange. 

His father, William Hazlitt, was a man of strong character, 
who had received with honor the degree of M.A. from Glasgow 
University. At the University he had allied himself with a group 
of men of liberal political and religious views and had subse- 
quently left the Presbyterian Church and had become a Uni- 
tarian minister. During his first charge he married Grace Loftus, 
the daughter of a nonconformist ironmonger. They were mar- 
ried at Peterborough in 1776 and moved to Marshfield. At 
Marshfield John was born, who was to become well known as 



X SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

a miniature portrait painter. Then a "call" came from Maidstone, 
Kent, in 1770. The ten years at Maidstone were cast in pleas- 
ant places, for here the family found a little group of free- 
thinkers, who liked them and whom they liked, and here the 
elder William Hazlitt could display his splendid ability in intel- 
lectual intercourse with the other ministers of the town, and 
occasionally with leaders such as Dr. Priestley and Benjamin 
Franklin. Here, too, were born Margaret in 1771 and William 
in 1778. Of seven children only these three lived to maturity. 

The members of this sturdy Dissenter family were not to 
spend their lives in the quiet of a Kentish village. The year 
1780 took them to Bandon, County Cork, Ireland. The father 
interested himself in the cause of the American soldiers at Kin- 
sale Prison, who were reported to be subjected to the most cruel 
abuses. His efforts to secure relief were successful, but brought 
upon him the suspicion and hatred of the citizens. He saw that 
his opportunity for usefulness in that community was at an end, 
and he began to consider where he should go. His devotion to 
the cause of liberty, naturally strong, had been nourished by 
what he had heard and seen, and possibly also by reports from 
his uncle, who was a colonel in the American Revolutionary 
Army. We are not surprised, then, that the next move for the 
Hazlitts should be to America. 

Our scene shifts to the New World. On the third of April, 
1783, the family set sail for New York. They landed on the 
twelfth of May. Fortunately, the story of these years is recorded 
in the delightful diary of Margaret,^ always called Peggy. We 
have not a more pleasing sketch of the America of that period. 
We catch glimpses of the wanderings of the family first in New 
York for two days, then to Philadelphia, where the elder Hazlitt 
preached for the churches and gave many lectures ; then to 
Weymouth about fifteen miles from Boston ; and finally to 

1 Selections from the diary were printed for the first time in " Four Generations 
of a Literary Family " (1S97). 



INTRODUCTION xi 

Dorchester, now a suburb of Boston. Peggy has drawn many a 
picture of the country, has told us about the conditions of travel, 
and has shown us a very affectionate family in new and interest- 
ing surroundings. The country about Weymouth especially 
pleased her. "The house stood in a most romantic spot, sur- 
rounded on three sides by very steep hills that sloped down just 
in sight of the windows, and were covered with locust trees. 
These trees grow to a great height, and their yellow blossoms, 
somewhat like the laburnum, perfumed the air in spring. On the 
green before the door stood a solitary pear-tree, beyond the 
shade of which in the hot days William was not allowed to go 
until four o'clock, when the sun was in some sort shaded by 
the neighbouring hills. . . . How often have we stood at the 
window looking at my father as he went up the Hingham Road 
with William in his nankeen dress marching by his side like one 
that could never be tired." ^ 

After a little more than a year and a half at Weymouth the 
family moved to Dorchester. For a time the elder Hazlitt was 
content to preach in Boston and its vicinity, but soon despair- 
ing of having a regular charge, decided to ^ return to England. 
He sailed from Boston in October, 1786, leaving the family in 
America for the winter. During the season John worked at his 
painting, doing a miniature of his brother, and William studied 
Latin. The first bit of writing which we have from the pen of 
the future essayist was composed at this time. 

1 2th of Nov. 
My dear Papa, — I shall never forget that we came to america. If 
we had not came to america, we should not have been away from one 
and other, though now it can not be helped. I think for my part that it 
would have been a great deal better if the white people had not found 
it out. Let the [others] have it for themselves, for it was made for 

1 " Four Generations," etc., I, 37. 

2 " Oh, most unfortunate resolve ! for but a few months after he had sailed 
old Mr. Gay died, and Dr. Gqrdon came over to London to publish his work, 
and at either of these places (Hingham or Salem) my father would have been 
chosen" (" Four Generations," etc., I, 50). 



Xll SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

them. I have got a little of my grammar : sometimes I get three pages 
and sometimes but one. I do not sifer any at all. Mamma Peggy and 
Jacky are all well, and I am to. — I still remain your most Affectionate 
Son, William Hazlitt. 

The Rev. Mr. Hazlitt, London. 
To the care of Mr. David Lewis. 

To the regret of Margaret the family left America. They 
sailed on the fourth of July, 1887, reached Portsmouth on the 
twelfth of August, and went at once to London. 

The sojourn in America seems to have made scant impres- 
sion upon the memory of Hazlitt, except the taste of barberries 
which he fondly recalled in later years. " I have it in my mouth 
still after an interval of more than thirty years, for I have met 
no other taste in all that time at all like it." 

After the autumn spent at Walworth,^ the father was called 
to the little church at Wem, near Shrewsbury. For more than 
a quarter of a century the family lived at Wem, and the younger 
William spent there most of his years between the age of ten 
and twenty-two. It would be strange if this period of residence 
had not left many an impression upon the sensitive tempera- 
ment of William Hazlitt, or had not often called forth a happy 
reminiscence of youthful scenes and incidents. His essays glow 
with the enthusiasm of youth as he recalls a scene in the 
house at Wem, the colors that rested on the Salopian hills, or 
some book or picture which he discovered in his many rambles 
about the country. " If I see a row of cabbage plants, or of 
peas or beans coming up, I immediately think of those which 
I used so carefully to water of an evening at Wem when my 
day's task was done, and of the pain with which I saw them 
droop and hang down their leaves in the morning's sun." How 
he looked back upon the experiences of those years was well 

1 '' When I was quite a boy my father used to take me to the Montpelier Tea- 
gardens at Walworth" ("Why Distant Objects Please," Works, VI, 257). See 
also '■ Four Generations," etc., I, 57. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

expressed when he said long afterwards, " I never see a child's 
kite but it seems to pull at my heart." 

A letter from William at the age of eleven to his brother 
John, written in March (1788) after the family had moved to 
Wem, allows us to see some of the life of the boy. " You want 
to know what I do. I am a busybody and do many silly things. 
I drew eyes and noses till about a fortnight ago. I have drawn 
a little boy since, a man's face, and a little boy's front face taken 
from a bust. Next Monday I shall begin to read Ovid's " Meta- 
morphoses" and " Eutropius." I shall like to know all the Latin 
and Greek I can. I want to learn how to measure the stars. I shall 
not, I suppose, paint the worse for knowing everything else." 

Besides the influence of the country and of books, perhaps 
the most lasting impression came from Hazlitt's father. In 
politics and religion the elder William Hazlitt had decided views. 
He had an aptitude for metaphysics and an abiding faith in 
God. Between the father and son was formed a bond of affec- 
tion and sympathy. The father looked with joyful pride upon 
his son's youthful prowess and liked to think of him as a minis- 
ter expounding the principles of religion and the rights of man. 
As the years passed this filial love in the work of the essayist 
blossomed in passages of fervent eloquence. " But we have 
known some such in happier days who had been brought up 
and lived from youth to age in the one constant belief of God 
and of his Christ, and who thought all other things but dross 
compared with the glory hereafter to be revealed." ^ 

An occasional letter from Margaret or from William himself, 
or a remark in his essays, gives us glimpses of these quiet years 
at Wem. In 1790 he went on a visit to the Tracys, a Unitarian 
family in Liverpool. Fortunately we have letters telling of this 
visit." A few sentences from these letters show a learned young 

1" On Court Influence," written in January, 1S18, Works, III, 254. 
2" Four Generations," etc., I, 68 ff. See also " The New School of Reform," 
Works, VII, 193. 



xiv SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

man of twelve. " I spent a very agreeable day yesterday, as I 
read i6o pages of Priestley and heard two good sermons. . . . 
I do not converse in French, but I and Miss Tracy have a book, 
something like a vocabulary, where we get the meaning of words. 
Miss Tracy never does accompts but I take an hour or two every 
other day." At Liverpool he saw his first play, and went for his 
first service to the Established Church, which he did not like. 

The scant record of these early years shows a boy of perfectly 
natural tastes, eager and enthusiastic, especially sensitive to line 
and color, and attracted by everything in the nature of meta- 
physical speculation. What is right ? What is law ? What is the 
basis of government ? These questions kept coming back to him 
to be answered and led him to this conclusion : " How ineffectual 
are all pleasures except those which arise from a knowledge of hav- 
ing done as far as one knows that which was right to make their 
possessors happy." ^ One practical outcome of his early think- 
ing was his letter in 1791, published in the Shretvsbury Chronicle, 
a learned article condemning the outrage against Dr. Priestley, 
whose house had been burned by a mob in Birmingham. 

So Hazlitt grew to be fifteen. The desire to have his son 
a nonconformist minister prompted the father to try the Hackney 
Theological Seminary. " My father," wrote the essayist, " would 
far sooner I had preached a good sermon than painted a Rem- 
brandt." His letters of that year ^ give the scope of his lectures 
— Sophocles, Quintilian, Greek grammar, mathematics, logic, a 
bit of Hebrew divinity and philosophy. Even this range did 
not quite satisfy him, for he was resolved to have a " particular 
system of politics " so that he would " be able to judge of the 
truth or falsehood of any principle which I hear or read, and of 
the justice or the contrary of any political transaction." ^ And 
as an experiment he tried his hand at an essay "On the Political 
State of Man.* " The best parts of the year were the fortnightly 

1 " Memoirs," p. 20. 2 Published in " Lamb and Hazlitt," pp. 33-47. 

8 Ibid., p. 39. 4 Ibid., p. 42. 



INTRODUCTION XV 

visits to the studio of his brother John, who was working with 
success under the tuition of Joshua Reynolds. However, not 
much at Hackney was to Hazhtt's liking, and 1794 found him 
again at home with nothing to do. 

The next eight years of his life at Wem, though meagerly 
recorded in an occasional remark in his essays, meant much for 
Hazlitt. The " long dejection " held him — " the repeated dis- 
appointments which have served to overcast and throw into deep 
obscurity some of the best years of my life." ^ He had been 
the companion of his brother, the painter ; he had tried to draw, 
he had looked at everything with a painter's eye and had dreamed 
of himself as painter, but he could do nothing. " I could not 
write a line. I could not draw a stroke. I was brutish. In 
words, in looks, in deeds I was no better than a changeling. 
... I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless like a worm 
by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless." ^ So waiiderhtst 
took possession of him. He walked over the country, across 
the hills of Shropshire into Llangollen, saw the pictures at 
the Burleigh Gallery, visited the Cathedral at Peterborough, 
tramped to Wisbeach " to see the town where my mother was 
born, the farmhouse, the gate where she used to stand when a 
girl of ten and look at the setting sun." ^ 

However, the years of awakening were not far distant. In 
1796 Hazlitt found a copy of the St. Jatnes Chronicle which 
contained a part of Burke's " Letter to a Noble Lord." * Then 
the world began anew for him. For the first time he realized the 
power of the written word and took fresh courage. He had 
vainly tried to " write a single essay, nay, a single page, a sen- 
tence." "To be able to convey the slightest conception of my 
meaning to others in words was the height of an almost hopeless 
ambition." With enthusiasm he began again his reading, and 

1 " Lamb and Hazlitt," p. 45 (letter from Hackney, October 23, 1793). 

2 " My First Acquaintance with Poets," p. i ;6. 

3 " Memoirs," pp. 36-37. * Notes, p. 326. 



xvi SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

made discoveries which gave him pleasure for a lifetime — 
Shakspere's plays ; Milton's " Paradise Lost " ; Boccaccio's 
"Decameron"; Rousseau's "Confessions" and "NewEloise"; 
Burke's "French Revolution"; "Letters of Junius"; the 
dramatists of the Restoration, especially Congreve and Far- 
quhar ; the novels of Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, and Sterne ; 
the "Tatler"; "Arabian Nights"; " Don Quixote"; the philo- 
sophical writings of Hartley, Berkeley, Hume, and Rochefou- 
cauld. During those plastic years these books stand first in the 
influences upon his life. As long as he lived he looked back 
upon them only with joy and recalled with gusto the circum- 
stances under which he had first read them. Books and usually 
the books of these proud days were to Hazlitt ever one of his 
" pure joys," for he boasted in later years that he had not read 
a book through since he became thirty. 

Though he loved books and though he got on so ill with his 
friends, he always gave books a place below real men and 
women. First of all was the influence of his father; next, per- 
haps, the lifelong friendship of his brother John. Early in these 
years he met Godwin, Holcroft, Rickman, the Burneys, and 
Crabb Robinson. Then a great light flashed across his pathway. 
As if from a dream the young man of twenty arose with a new 
strength. He met Coleridge,^ heard him preach, walked and 
talked with him, and was invited by him to visit him at Nether 
Stowey and meet Wordsworth. 

For Hazlitt there were probably no two men in all the world 
more worth knowing. What this meant to Hazlitt he has 
described with the charm of a poet in one of the finest essays 
in the language. By leaps and bounds his enthusiasm rose after 
Coleridge left Wem. After three weeks at Shrewsbury and at 
Wem, Hazlitt started for a walking tour in Wales, celebrated^ 
his " birthday over a fowl, a bottle of sherry, and Rousseau's 
'New Eloise'"; then set out for Nether Stowey^ to visit the 

1 « My First Acquaintance with Poets," pp. 1 76 ff . 2 Notes, p. 366. 3 Ibid., p. 367. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

Coleridges. On the way he spent two days at Bridgwater, 
where he discovered " Paul and Virginia." Arriving at Nether 
Stowey, he walked over with Coleridge to Alfoxden. Words- 
worth had gone to Bristol to see a play, but Dorothy Wordsworth 
received them, and after lunch brought out the manuscript of 
Wordsworth, and Coleridge read aloud the poems which in 
a few months were to appear as " The Lyrical Ballads." That 
evening they returned to Nether Stowey. Next morning Words- 
worth came over for a day, and so back and forth for three 
weeks this remarkable intercourse continued. Hazlitt went back 
to think it all over. Those days of talk with Coleridge and 
Wordsworth had set the young man of twenty on a new path. 

By 1799 he met Crabb Robinson, who has left in his autobiog- 
raphy a most interesting record of many men and women of 
that time in England and Europe.^ A passage from his Remi- 
niscences of 1799 deserves our immediate attention. "Another 
interesting acquaintance which commenced at this period was 
Will. Hazlitt, a man who has left a deservedly high reputation 
as a critic, but who, at the time I first knew him, was struggling 
against a great difficulty of expression, which rendered him by 
no means a general favourite in company. His bashfulness, 
want of words, slovenliness in dress &:c. made him the object of 
ridicule. . . . The moment I saw him I concluded he was an 
extraordinary man. He had few friends and was flattered by 
my attentions. He was about my age. He used frequently to 
breakfast with me, and I rendered him a great service, intro- 
ducing him to Anthony Robinson, who procured him his first job 
by inducing Johnson to publish his first work. ... I was under 
great obligations to Hazlitt as the director of my taste. It was 
he who first made me acquainted with " The Lyrical Ballads,"'^ 

1 It is certainly to be regretted that this autobiography in MS. in the Williams 
Library, London, is accessible to the large majority of readers only in a very un- 
satisfactory and incomplete edition of Thomas Sadler (editions of 1869 and 1872). 
Our extracts are taken from the manuscript itself. 

2 Published in the autumn of 1798. See Notes, p. 367. 



xviii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and the poems generally of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and 
Southey, with whom he was through life afterwards so closely 
connected, whom he so ill-treated, and who became so important 
to me. Hazlitt was also, like myself, a great admirer of Godwin 
and Holcroft, and also about this time became acquainted 
with them." ^ 

What was Hazlitt to do .-* He had been spending much of his 
time with his brother John in London, trying to learn to paint. 
The year at Hackney had shown the folly of his attempting to 
preach ; the years at Wem had nourished his love for meta- 
physics, but metaphysics offered no prospect of a livelihood. 
The meeting with the poets, and his study of their work, had 
stirred in him a love of writing, but the words failed to come. 
There was still one thing left. He had always looked upon 
faces and upon nature with the eyes of the painter, he had 
always liked to draw, and he had passed countless hours in his 
brother's studio. He loved pictures with an enthusiasm bom of 
a real love of the art. Here, certainly, was your real painter 1 

The next move was to Paris and the Louvre, with all its 
treasures, the Mecca, then as now, of the aspiring painter. In 
October, 1802, he wrote six ^ letters to his family which described 
his plans of copying the masterpieces for friends in England, 
and which abounded with enthusiastic admiration of certain 
masters. Of the pictures of Rubens he wrote : " I intend to 
copy two out of the five I am to do for Rail ton. ... I prom- 
ised Northcote to copy Titian's portrait of Hippolito de Medici. 
... I shall have gone on at the rate of a portrait in a fort- 
night. ... I generally go to the Museum about half past nine 

1 Another passage from the diary of the same date tells of the Hazlitt family. 
" In passing through Wem in Shropshire 1 saw a very worthy old Presbyterian 
Minister — no worse than an Arian, I presume, the father of the Hazlitts. William, 
who had become my friend, was not there, but John, the miniature painter, was. 
I liked the good old man and his wife, who had all the solidity (I do not mean 
stolidity) and sober earnestness of the more respectable noncons. There was also 
a maiden sister (Peggy). Altogether an amusing and agreeable group in my 
memory." 2 Published in " Memoirs," etc., I, S5-102. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

or ten o'clock, and continue there till three or four." He worked 
in Paris for four months and returned in January with at least 
eleven copies made for the people who had ordered them. 

Though now and then a fear escaped him that he could not 
be a Rembrandt or a Titian, both of whom he idolized, yet he 
persevered and set about diligently to turn his work to some 
practical account. For almost three years he wandered in the 
north of England as an itinerant painter, doing portraits of 
Wordsworth,^ Coleridge,- Hartley Coleridge, and an old woman^ 
near Manchester in 1802 or 1803. At Gateacre, near Liver- 
pool, he painted the head of Dr. Shepherd,* friend of his father 
and father of Sally Shepherd, for whom he seemed to have had 
a passing affection ; next the portrait of his father,^ the doing of 
which gave to both father and son much pleasure ; finally a por- 
trait of Charles Lamb in " the costume of a Venetian senator.'"' 
This last is the only specimen of Hazlitt's painting which is still 
preserved. 

Here the career of the painter came abruptly to a close. 
Afterwards he worked occasionally on a portrait or upon his 
favorite subject, Jacob's Ladder, but he no longer relied upon 
painting as a profession. Doubtless the consciousness of in- 
feriority to his favorite painters, combined with a lack of patience 
necessary to acquire the technique of the art, convinced him that 
success did not lie that way. 

The portrait of Lamb in 1S04 probably introduced Hazlitt to 
this delightful man. They met, perhaps, in the early months of 

^ See Southey's letter to Rickman, December 14, 1S03. 

2 See Coleridge's letter to Sir George Beaumont, October i, 1803 ; also Words- 
worth's letter to Sir George Beaumont, June 3, 1805, thanking him for the pres- 
ent of Coleridge's picture. " We think, as far as mere likeness goes, Hazlitt's is 
the better, but the expression in Hazlitt's is quite dolorous and funereal ; that in 
this is much more pleasing, though actually falling far below what one would wish 
to see infused into a picture of Coleridge." 3 " On the Pleasure of Painting," p. 86. 

4 Douady, " Vie de William Hazlitt," p. 356. 

5 " Four Generations," etc., I, 83. 

6 Mary Lamb's letter to Mrs. Coleridge, October 13, 1S04. This painting is 
at present in the National Portrait Gallery, London. 



XX SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

that year.^ In her letter " to Mrs. Coleridge Mary Lamb wrote : 
'' I have lately been talking of you with Mrs. Hazlitt [wife of 
John Hazlitt]. William Hazlitt is painting my brother's picture, 
which has brought us acquainted with the whole family. I like 
William Hazlitt and his sister [Peggy] very much indeed, and I 
think Mrs. Hazlitt a pretty good-humoured woman." The 
meeting at Godwin's has been made memorable by Hazlitt's 
description.^ They were talking, so Hazlitt tells us, of man, 
man as he is and as he is to be. One thing was said by Cole- 
ridge, another by Godwin, something by Holcroft, then Lamb 
stammered out slowly, " Give me man as he is not to be." From 
that moment Hazlitt became his friend. The friendship lasted, 
with one or two interruptions, to the end of Hazlitt's life.* The 
spirit of the Wednesday evenings at Lamb's apartments in Mitre 
Court has been expressed by no one so well as by Hazlitt.^ In 
that period of more than twenty-five years there were many 
harsh words and bitter feelings, but the one who remained true 
to Hazlitt was the man most worth knowing in London. 

Of these years of Hazlitt's life only an incident or two may 
be gleaned from the letters of his friends. Hazlitt accompanied 
Lamb to Drury Lane on the memorable tenth of December, 
1806, when Lamb's farce, " Mr. H.," was produced with pathetic 
results. Charles and Mary, Hazlitt, and Crabb Robinson were 
in the pit.® The year 1807 is significant for an incident which 
brought the two friends together in a practical joke,'' conceived 

1 Lucas, " Life of Charles Lamb," p. 248 (edition of igio). 

2 Mary Lamb's letter to Mrs. Coleridge, October 13, 1S04. This painting is at 
present in the National Portrait Gallery, London. 3 p. ig6. 

4 Lucas, "Life of Charles Lamb," pp. 24S-252 ; W. C. Hazlitt, "Lamb and 
Hazlitt," passim. 

5 Crabb Robinson affords us many a glimpse. " In that humble apartment 
I spent many happy hours and saw a greater number of excellent persons than I 
had ever seen collected together in one room." 

6 " On Persons One would Wish to have Seen," p. 2 12 ;" On the Conversation of 
Authors," Works, VII, 24. See also Lucas, "Life of Charles Lamb," /(755w« ,• 
Hazlitt's account in his essay on "Great and Little Things," Works, VI, 232. 

'' The joke is described in W. C. Hazlitt, "Lamb and Hazlitt," p. 61. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

probably by Lamb and Joseph Hume of the Victualing Office, 
Somerset House, after the manner of the hoax practiced by 
Dean Swift on the almanac maker, Partridge. The report was 
circulated that " W. H., a portrait painter, in Southampton 
Buildings, Holbom, put an end to his existence by cutting his 
throat in a shocking manner." All the details were vividly pre- 
sented. To this report Hazlitt offered a Petition and Remon- 
strance, protesting and setting forth proofs that he was still 
alive. In a wonderful letter of four pages folio to Hume, Lamb 
accepted this statement as either a forgery or a communication 
from the dead. The incident closed with a short note from 
Hume to Hazlitt, warning him against Lamb. 

It would be strange, indeed, if the names of women did not 
slip into the pages of Hazlitt's biography. As a young man he 
was very shy, especially in the presence of young women, who 
always made game of his awkward manner. However, while 
he was a traveling painter in the north he had a passing affection 
for a Miss Railton of Liverpool, for a Miss Walton, and for a 
certain Sally Shepherd, daughter of Dr. Shepherd, who was an 
intimate friend of the elder Hazlitt. Apparently without much 
reason De Quincey has insisted that Dorothy Wordsworth had 
repelled his attentions. Fate had something else in store for 
Hazlitt in the person of Sarah Stoddart, daughter of Lieutenant 
John Stoddart, a retired and disappointed naval officer. As early 
as 1799 Hazlitt and John Stoddart, the brother, had become 
acquainted, but there was never any affection between them. 
Mary Lamb and Sarah Stoddart had been friends for reasons 
which we can scarcely understand.-^ Fortunately the letters of 
Mary have been kept, but no one of Sarah's is forthcoming. It 
is difficult for us to conceive what attraction Hazlitt found in 
Sarah. She was not romantic or imaginative. She had little 
physical charm, and was selfish and determined. She had been 
pursued by various suitors, who are now mere names to us — 

1 Mrs. Gilchrist, " Mary Lamb," chaps, vi-ix. 



xxii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Mr. Turner, Mr. White, Mr. Bowling, and " William of partridge 
memory." Her turning down of each seemed to cause her little 
concern. However, the fateful affair between Hazlitt and Sarah 
began to be serious, and, after considerable uneasiness on her 
part regarding the marriage settlement, culminated in a deci- 
sion to marry. Just when Hazlitt and Sarah first came together 
is still a matter for conjecture,^ but no evidence brought forward 
thus far convinces us that they knew each other before 1806. 
There was considerable fear on the part of friends that the new 
marriage would not be an unqualified success. We have no let- 
ters from Sarah Stoddart, but nothing in her life shows that she 
was much concerned with anything but the marriage settlement. 
Of Hazlitt there remains one letter, written soon after the hoax 
mentioned above. " What has become of you ? " he writes. 
" Are you married, hearing that I was dead (for so it has been 
reported) ? . . . For, indeed, I never love you as well as when 
I think of sitting down with you to dinner on a boiled scrag end 
of mutton and hot potatoes." The letter ends with suggestions 
about the marriage settlement. In February, 1808, he went to 
Salisbury to see her and to make plans for the approaching 
nuptials. Mary Lamb was to be bridesmaid, and wrote letters 
which are full of interest, chatting about wedding presents and 
wedding gowns. For some reason Charles Lamb was not at 
first included in the wedding party, but when on the first of 
May, 1808, the marriage took place at St. Andrew's Church, 
Holborn, John Stoddart and wife, and Charles and Mary Lamb 
were the only guests. The account of the wedding is recorded 
in a letter by Charles Lamb to Sou they : " I was at Hazlitt's 

1 Mr. W. C. Hazlitt ('■ Memoirs," I, 117) thinks that the William Hazlitt men- 
tioned by Mary Lamb in her letter of September, 1S03, was our William Hazlitt, 
and that she was writing to him at the time. Mr. J. Rogers Rees {Notes and 
Queries, April 11, 1908) holds a similar opinion. Professor Douady ("Vie de 
William Hazlitt," p. 360) thinks it was not William Hazlitt but some earlier Wil- 
liam. The reading of all the evidence to be had leads me to agree with Professor 
Douady. How any one can read all the letters of Mary Lamb and think otherwise 
I cannot conceive ! 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

marriage and had like to have been turned out several times 
during the ceremony. Anything awful makes me laugh." ^ Im- 
mediately after the marriage Hazlitt and his wife withdrew to 
Sarah's cottage ^ at Winterslow, a little village about six miles 
from Salisbury. 

Life began in earnest for the new family at Winterslow. By 
a process of elimination Hazlitt had decided upon writing as 
his profession. Already he had published, but nothing with 
profit. He had long been occupied with " The Essay on Human 
Action " (1805), a metaphysical essay, the object of which, as he 
afterwards said,^ was " to remove a stumbling-block in the meta- 
physical doctrine of the innate and necessary selfishness of the 
human mind." " The Free Thoughts on Public Affairs " he had 
published at his own expense in 1806. In " A Reply to Malthus " 
(1807) he had set forth his views, denying the proposition of 
Malthus regarding population. Then he turned to that worthy 
and popular book by Abraham Tucker, " Light of Nature 
Pursued"* and condensed its seven volumes into one (1807). 
Finally, in the same year he prepared " The Eloquence of the 
British Senate " ^ in which he incorporated selections from the 
best Parliament speeches with explanatory comment. It will 
be readily seen that little financial reward could be expected 
from such a list, and yet from Hazlitt's point of view the work 
was well worth the doing. He had the opportunity to set down 
more clearly his philosophical speculations; he had studied with 
special profit the work by Tucker, and had read with interest 
and enthusiasm the best English orations. By the publication 
of the selections he received favorable notices from the press, 
which he could turn to his account when occasion served. 

1 Written August 9, 181 5. 

2 Mr. J. Rogers Rees {Notes and Queries, July 25, 190S) has cleared up the 
question of Sarah Hazlitt's property at Winterslow, and has shown that there is 
no basis for the statement of Mr. W. C. Hazlitt that her annual income from " her 
cottage" was ;if 120. 3 " Letter to William Gifford," Works, I, 403. 

^ " Four Generations," etc., 1, 96. 5 Ibid., I, 97. 



xxiv SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Next he occupied himself with an English grammar, which he 
published in 1810, and then proceeded with the " Memoirs of 
Holcroft," which, however, did not appear till 18 16. His exten- 
sive reading in English and French philosophy led him to con- 
sider writing a history of philosophy. With his reading and 
writing Hazlitt had not entirely given up painting. At times he 
worked industriously, especially on his favorite subject, Jacob's 
Ladder,^ by which he wished to symbolize the ascent of the 
human spirit toward light, " toward the spiritual heaven of 
grand ideas." So the months passed at Winterslow. 

The absence of the Hazlitts from London was felt by the 
Lambs. Mary Lamb wrote to Sarah Hazlitt, December 10, 1808 : 
" You cannot think how very much we miss you and H. [azlitt] 
of a Wednesday evening. All the glory of the night, I may say, 
is at an end. . . . Hazlitt was most brilliant, most ornamental 
as a Wednesday man, but he was a more useful one on com- 
mon days when he dropped in after a quarrel or a fit of the 
glooms." After repeated urging the Lambs consented to go 
down to Winterslow. The trip was planned, then postponed on 
account of Mary's illness. The letters describing the details are 
full of humorous expectancy. The party was to consist of four, 
Charles and Mary Lamb, Martin Burney, and Edward Phillips. 
Mary was to take bed coverings, Burney was to sleep in the 
kitchen, and all were to help pay the expenses of entertainment. 
The visit was finally accomplished in the fall of 1809. We have 
glimpses of it from one of Lamb's letters." " I have but this 
moment received your letter dated the 9th instant, having just 
come off a journey from Wiltshire where I have been with Mary 
on a visit to Hazlitt. The journey has been of infinite service to 
her. We have had nothing but sunshiny days and daily walks 
from eight to twenty miles a day : have seen Wilton, Salisbury, 

1 See " Lamb and Hazlitt," pp. 99-102, for Hazlitt's letter to his wife (who had 
gone to London for a short visit with the Lambs), written about April, 1809. 

2 Charles Lamb's letter to Coleridge, October 30, 1809. 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

Stonehenge, etc."^ A second visit in the following July (iSio) 
was equally happy, but did not end so fortunately for the health 
of Mary Lamb. On their return to London they went by the 
way of Oxford and Blenheim, accompanied by Hazlitt. There 
are more delightful references to these visits in the letters of the 
Lambs and in Hazlitt's essays.^ 

We read of visits of the Hazlitts to London^ early in 1811. 
In his diary of February 18, 181 1, Crabb Robinson called at 
"W. Hazlitt's" on the 4th of March; he "took tea with W. 
Hazlitt and had two hours pleasant chat with him." On the 6th 
he found Hazlitt at the Lambs ; on the 9th " called on W. Haz- 
litt " ; on the loth Hazlitt called on Robinson; on the 29th 
" spent the evening with W. Hazlitt. Smith, Hume, Coleridge, 
Lamb there . . . Coleridge and Hazlitt discussed about abstract 
ideas"; on the 30th he "found Coleridge and W. Hazlitt at 
Lamb's." So it appears that at least William Hazlitt spent much 
of March in London, though they did not move to London till 
late that year or early in 18 12. 

On the twenty-sixth of September, 18 1 1 , their son William was 
born. By way of congratulation Mary Lamb wrote, "I never knew 
an event of the kind that gave me so much pleasure as the little 
long-looked-for, come-at-last's arrival " ; and Charles could not 
help showing his good heart even in a short note, " Well, my 
blessing and Heaven's be upon him, and make him like his 
father, with something of a better temper and a smoother head 
of hair: and then all the men and women must love him." * 

Since his days at Hackney (1794) Hazlitt had kept in close 
touch with London. His brother John, who was gaining a 
respectable patronage as a miniature painter, always welcomed 

1 Hazlitt, " Farewell to Essay Writing," p. 000. See also Mary Lamb's letter 
to Sarah, November 7, 1809. Mrs. Gilchrist, " Mary Lamb," p. 174. 

2 Hazlitt, "On the Conversation of Authors," Works, VII, 42; also "The 
Character of Country People," Works, XI, 309. 

3 Mary Lamb writes on the thirtieth of November, 1810, to Sarah, urging her 
and Hazlitt to make them a visit. 4 Letters bearing the date, 2d October, 181 1. 



xxvi SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

him. His circle of acquaintances and friends was gradually 
widening, and he saw more and more that to London he must 
come if he wished to profit by his writing. Though he had 
published nothing which earned for him a popular reputation, 
his power of expression was developing and his original talk 
and independent thinking were bringing to him a group of the 
best literary folk. As Charles Lamb intimated in his letter on the 
occasion of the birth of the new William, Hazlitt's temper was 
not of the best. He was naturally much depressed and soured 
by the events of the political world. Life had begun for him, 
he tells us, with the French Revolution, and Napoleon was his 
idol, " the champion in the flesh of the rights of the oppressed." 
To see his romantic hero enmeshed in the net by a group of 
unthinking, hypocritical aristocrats galled him unspeakably. To 
see some of the best men in England, — Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
Southey, and Landor, — men who had boasted of their revolu- 
tionary allegiance, on their knees, as he thought, with feeble 
recantations, tried his patience to the uttermost and made him 
exclaim in despair, " By Heaven, I think I '11 endure it no more." 
Moreover, his years of married life had not been happy. 
Hazlitt was certainly not an ideal husband. He was irregular 
in his habits, slovenly in dress, irritable and buoyant by turns, 
angry that the world did not seem to serve him well. That his 
marriage had not turned out happily was not all his fault. Sarah 
Hazlitt was utterly incompetent in all matters requiring domestic 
economy. She was untidy, selfish, and eager for a kind of taw- 
dry show.^ She had a fair amount of understanding, but pos- 
sessed little sentiment, and surely no sympathy with Hazlitt 
and his work. Just why they ever got so far as marriage is as 

1 One bit of description of Sarah Hazlitt's visit to a lady at Bayswater makes 
us wonder why William did not, like Andrea del Sarto, continue his painting of 
portraits with his wife as model ! 

It was a wet day and she had been to a malking-match. She was dressed in a white 
muslin gown, a black velvet spencer and a Leghorn hat with a white feather. 

Lucas, " Life of Lamb," pp. 317-318. 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

difficult for us to conceive as it is easy to understand why they 
could not be happy together.^ Much sooner than he expected 
he grew tired of sitting down with Sarah " to dinner on a boiled 
scrag end of mutton and hot potatoes " — ^ if so bountiful a re- 
past had ever been prepared by the improvident Sarah. In 
despair he decided to move to London. 

In London the Hazlitts took the house at 19 York Street, 
which had been occupied by Milton from 1652 to 1658, and 
where he had begun " Paradise Lost " and had written several 
of his sonnets and much of his prose. The house was owned 
by Jeremy Bentham, who lived in an adjoining mansion, and 
whom Hazlitt has vividly described " walking in his garden. 

Hazlitt's first work after he came to town was the course of 
public lectures on the history of English philosophy, which he 
delivered at the Russell Institution.^ The most interesting con- 
temporary record of these lectures is the diary of Crabb Robinson, 
under the date January 14, 181 2 : " Heard Hazlitt's first lecture 
on the history of English philosophy. He seems to have no con- 
ception of the difference between a lecture and a book. His 
lectures can't possibly be popular, hardly tolerable. He read a 
sensible and excellent introduction on philosophy and on Hobbes, 
but he delivered himself in a low monotonous voice, with his eyes 
fixed intently on his book, not once daring to look on his audience ; 
he read, too, so rapidly that no one could possibly follow him, 
at the same time the matter he read was of a kind to require 
reflection." The diary of this date abounds in comments by 
Robinson and others upon Hazlitt and his lectures.^ Hazlitt was 

1 The humor of the misalliance is sometimes brought out by incidents related 
by his contemporaries ; for example, the christening party to which Haydon was 
invited and which did not take place (" B. R. Haydon and his Friends," p. 57). 

2 See Hazlitt's essay on Hentham in " The Spirit of the Age," Works, IV, 189. 

3 Plan of the lectures will be found in " Memoirs," I, 192 ff. 

4 It is difficult to suppress one's irritation that this diary should have been so 
badly edited by Sadler. Not only are most important passages omitted from the 
daily entries, but what has been printed has repeatedly been altered without 
apparent reason. 



xxviii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

much depressed over his lectures, and threatened to give up the 
whole series. Friends offered bits of advice, and all seemed in- 
terested and sympathetic. On the next Tuesday night (January 
2i) he "improved vastly." ..." I hope he will now get on. 
He read half his first lecture at B. Montague's last night. He 
was to read the whole, but abruptly broke off and could not be 
persuaded to read the remainder. Lamb and other friends were 
there." At the lecture, Robinson writes, " he was interrupted by 
applause several times." The lectures followed on consecutive 
Tuesday nights, with two exceptions, March lo and 24. Of the 
former date Robinson tells us : " W. H. wrote to say he is obliged 
to postpone his lectures and I fear his debts oppress him, so 
that he cannot proceed. I wish I could afford him assistance, 
for I know no state of suffering more dreadful than that of 
indigent genius." The last of the series was given on April 27. 
Of the last lecture Robinson writes, " Very well delivered and 
full of shrewd observation." 

From the Robinson diary it appears that Hazlitt continued his 
work as portrait painter.^ On the 30th of June, 18 12, Robinson 
called. " W. Hazlitt was operating on Thomas " (the brother of 
Crabb Robinson). On December 24, "I therefore ventured to ask 
about my brother's picture which he promises me and I believe 
I shall get it." But this work was apparently of little conse- 
quence, though it may have yielded a spare penny. His real 
work was as reporter to the gallery of the House of Commons, 
followed by employment on the Morning Chronicle under the edi- 
torship of James Perry. How this new engagement came about 
appears from certain entries in Robinson's diary, September 
30, 181 2: "Met Dr. Stoddart and with Miss Lamb with whom 
I chatted about Hazlitt. H., at the same time that he went to 
Perry and received from him a conditional promise of being 
employed by him as a reporter, sent Dr. S. to Walter [of the 
Tijnes] and Walter has promised to do something for H., but by 

1 See March 10, iSii, etc. 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

this injudicious conduct H. has exposed himself to the likelihood 
of offending either W. or P. However the prospect of his find- 
ing the means of subsistence is by this greatly improved." On 
December 24 he wrote: " Called late on C. Lamb. The party 
there. Hazlitt I was gratified by finding in his high spirits. He 
finds his engagement with Perry as Parliamentary Reporter very 
easy, and the 4 guineas a week keeps his head above water. He 
seems quite happy." In this way Hazlitt's career as a writer 
for newspapers and magazines began and lasted to the end of 
his life. From parliamentary reporter he passed to the position 
as dramatic critic, writer on art, and miscellaneous essayist. 
In 18 13 he was called upon by Francis Jeffrey to review books 
for the Edinburgh Review, and in turn he contributed to the 
Examiner, Champion, and the Times. The account of Hazlitt's 
connection with these publications we have reserved for more 
detailed discussion in a separate section. 

Hazlitt's finances were never prosperous, but he was earning 
a fair income, perhaps never more than five or six hundred 
pounds a year. However, his tastes were simple and his habits 
not extravagant. Soon after he moved to London he began to 
drink heavily, but soon realizing that he could not bear up under 
the habit, he abstained completely from fermented liquors, 
substituting strong tea, which he drank often and in great 
quantities as long as he lived. ^ 

Robinson writes of the handsome room in which he found 
Hazlitt. On April 29, 1813, " spent the evening which I have 
not done for a long time before at C. Lamb's. At whist as 
usual. Chat with Hazlitt who finds himself made comfortable 
by a situation which furnishes him with the necessaries of life, 
keeps his best faculties not employed but awake, and I do 
not think it is much to be feared that his faculties will there- 
fore decline. He has a most powerful intellect and needs only 

1 " Literary Remains," p. xlvi. Patmore, "Friends and Acquaintances," I, 
302-308. 



XXX SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

encouragement to manifest this to the world by a work which 
could not be overlooked." So Hazlitt was occupied with criticism 
and essay writing. His articles became the subject of discussion 
among his friends and found stanch supporters as well as 
aggressive enemies. His splendid discriminating criticism of art 
drew hearty admiration from Flaxman ; his blind devotion to 
Buonapartism was not approved but disregarded. His attacks 
on Wordsworth and Coleridge caused many heated discussions 
and alienated many friends. At any rate, he was being talked 
about. Not only did his writing provoke discussion ; he was 
sought after as a talker. Robinson writes December g, 1816 : 
" I went to Alsager's. There I met the Lambs, Hazlitt, &c. . . . 
Hazlitt was sober, argumentative, acute, and interesting. I did 
not converse with him but enjoyed his conversation with others." 
Miss Mitford has left an amusing incident,^ showing something 
of Hazlitt's temper as well as the regard in which he was begin- 
ning to be' held. After Hazlitt had left the Morning Chronicle 
" Perry remembered him as an old acquaintance and asked him 
to dinner, and a large party to meet him, to hear him talk and 
show him off as the lion of the day. The lion came, smiled 
and bowed, handed Miss Bentley to the dining-room, asked 
Miss Perry to take wine, said once ' Yes ' and twice ' No ' and 
never uttered another word the whole evening. The most pro- 
voking part of this scene was that he was gracious and polite 
past all expression, a perfect pattern of mute elegance, a silent 
Lord Chesterfield, and his unlucky host had the misfortune to 
be very thoroughly enraged without anything to complain of." 
The Mr. Alsager mentioned above was the commercial editor 
of the Times, and also a member of the Committee of the 
Surrey Institution. Through him it was proposed that Hazlitt 
should give a course of lectures on the English Poets. The 
lectures were delivered in the early part of 1818 and met with 
unqualified success. Even Crabb Robinson, who had broken 

1 A. G. L'Estrange, " Life of Mary Russell Mitford," II, 47. 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

with Hazlitt on account of his attacks upon Wordsworth, was 
delighted with the lectures. Talfourd's account of them is most 
enthusiastic.^ " He was not eloquent in the true sense of the 
term, for his thoughts were too weighty to be moved along by 
the shallow stream of feeling which an evening's excitement can 
rouse. He wrote all his lectures and read them as they were 
written ; but his deep voice and earnest manner suited his mat- 
ter well. He seemed to dig into his subject — and not in vain." 
The first lectures had been so successful that Hazlitt under- 
took a second course on the English Comic Writers, and then a 
third on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. The 
three series appeared in three volumes, respectively in the years 
1818, 1819, 1820. Immediately after the publication of the 
first, Gifford of the Quarterly Review pounced upon the author. 
He warned his readers against this "incoherent jumble of grand 
words." B/ackzvood joined in the chase, and though the Edin- 
burgh Reviezv and the Scotsman had occasionally discriminating 
reviews of some of Hazlitt's writing, they followed the lead of 
the Quarterly and Blackwood, and applied to Hazlitt a list of 
epithets which has probably not been equaled in the annals 
of abuse. He was called an " incendiary," a " Radical," a 
" Buonapartist," a " cockney scribbler," a " slang-whanger," a 
" slanderer of the human race," and " pimpled Hazlitt." That 
Hazlitt could take care of himself the world soon learned. In 
a letter, probably of 18 18, Keats expressed what many people 
felt : " Hazlitt has damned the bigoted and the blue-stockinged — 
how durst the man ? He is your only good damner, and if ever 
I am damned I should like him to damn me." Naturally of a 
shy disposition, Hazlitt did not wish to pick a quarrel, but he 
was stung to the quick by the epithets which came from every 
direction. Gifford had been unfair, insolent, and arrogant, and 
Hazlitt began to brood over this injustice and the kind of man 
who had attacked him. To add injury to insult, Gifford's attacks 

1 See '■ Literary Remains," pp. xlvii ff. 



xxxii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

had practically stopped, so Hazlitt thought, the sale of the 
"Characters of Shakespear's Plays." ^ He went straight to his 
subject and made a sketch as clear as a portrait of this man, who 
became for the moment the incarnation of all that was mean, 
dishonest, and vile. Though most of the invective of this time 
is not pleasant reading, we must admit the "Letter to Gifford" 
(1819) to the category of best satiric letters, equal in virulence 
and concise expression to Johnson's " Letter to Chesterfield " 
and Burke's " Letter to a Noble Lord." 

While we are occupied with these bitter quarrels between 
Hazlitt and his critics, we should not forget that there was a 
Mrs. Hazlitt. Hazlitt had not forgotten her, although he had 
not lived with her since 18 ig. He had led a nomadic existence 
in London, trying first this lodging place and then that in differ- 
ent parts of the city. Sarah Hazlitt had probably returned to 
the house at Winterslow, but came occasionally on visits to 
London. Only one thing they had in common — an affection 
for their son William. The boy was the link that bound them 
for a long time after they ceased to live together. Realizing their 
utter incompatibility, they decided to secure a formal divorce.^ 
Under the circumstances this was a legal impossibility in Eng- 
land, but the divorce might be easily obtained after forty days' 

1 Hazlitt wrote: " My book sold well — the first edition had gone off in six 
weeks — till that review came out. I had just prepared a second edition, but then 
the Quarterly told the public that I was a fool and a dunce ; and more, that I was 
an evil-disposed person ; and the public, supposing Gifford to know best, confessed 
it had been a great ass to be pleased when it ought not to be, and the sale com- 
pletely stopped " (" Memoirs," I, 228). 

That the effect of Gifford's abuse was probably not so bad as Hazlitt described 
has been shown by A. W. Pollard. See biographical note to his edition of " The 
Characters," pp. 7-8. 

2 That his own personal experience is shadowed in the advice to his son, we 
may readily surmise. "If you ever marry, I would wish you to marry the woman 
you like. Do not be guided by the recommendation of your friends. Nothing 
will atone for or overcome an original distaste. It will only increase from intimacy, 
and if you are to live separate, it is better not to come together. There is no use 
in dragging a chain through life unless it binds one to the object we love " 
(Hazlitt, " Advice to a Schoolboy," Works, XII, 435). 



INTRODUCTION xxxiil 

residence in Scotland.^ They proceeded to Edinburgh to wait 
for the forty days. They occasionally met over a cup of tea and 
discussed prospects. While Hazlitt lectured at Glasgow, Sarah 
visited parts of Scotland and Ireland. The disgraceful affair 
came to an end with the granting of the divorce in June, 1822, 
and both returned to England greatly relieved. However, they 
saw something of each other and Sarah visited her former hus- 
band's mother and sister, Peggy, and wrote affectionate letters 
to the latter. 

Their determination to secure a divorce may have been 
strengthened by Hazlitt's infatuation for Sarah Walker, a tailor's 
daughter, whose mother kept the lodging house in Southampton 
Buildings, Chancery Lane, where Hazlitt was then living. The 
whole story ^ is offensive 'to us now, but we may have some 
consolation from the fact that we now have all the details, and 
that they might easily have been worse. Procter described the girl 
as having " a round small face, glassy eyes, a snake-like walk and 
being very silent and demure, with a steady, unmoving, uncomfort- 
able gaze upon the person she was addressing." What her real 
character was we cannot quite know, since we have only Hazlitt's 
account, and even that makes us respect her wisdom in refusing 
to marry Hazlitt. But there seems to be no reason to doubt the 
genuineness of Hazlitt's passion, although his " Liber Amoris," 
which gives us the story, does not bear all the marks of genuine 
passion. Perhaps the most disgusting aspect of the whole affair 
was his desire to tell everybody about it. Procter gives us the 
account.^ " His intellect was completely subdued by an insane 
passion. He was, for a time, unable to think or talk of anything 
else. He abandoned criticism and books as idle matters, and fa- 
tigued every person whom he met by expressions of her love, of 



1 For a complete account, see Birrell, "William Hazlitt," pp. 170 ff. For 
all the details and the letters of Sarah Hazlitt, see Le Gallienne's edition of 
" Liber Amoris." 2 " Liber Amoris," edited by Le Gallienne. 

3 Procter, "Autobiographical Fragments" (1873). 



xxxiv SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

her deceit, and of his own vehement disappointment. This was 
when he lived in Southampton Buildings, Holborn. Upon one 
occasion I know that he told the story of his attachment to five 
different persons in the same day, and at each time entered into 
minute details of his love story. " I am a cursed fool,' said he to 

me. ' I saw J going into Wills' Coffee House yesterday 

morning : he spoke to me. I followed him into the house, and 
whilst he lunched I told him the whole story. Then I wandered 

into the Regent's Park, where I met one of M 's sons. I 

walked with him some time, and on his using some civil ex- 
pression, by Jove, Sir, I told him the whole story. (Here he 
mentioned one other instance which I forget.) ' Well, Sir, (he 
went on) I then went and called on Haydon, but he was out. 
There was only his man, Salmon, there, but, by Jove, I could 
not help myself. It all came out — the whole cursed story. 
Afterwards I went to look at some lodgings at Pimlico. The 
landlady at one place, after some explanations as to rent, &c., 
said to me very kindly, ' I am afraid you are not well. Sir ? ' 
' No, ma'am,' said I, ' I am not well,' and on enquiring further, 
the devil take me if I did not let out the whole story from begin- 
ning to end.' " At least Hazlitt saw no humor in the affair. " I 
am in some sense proud that I can feel this dreadful passion — 
it gives one a kind of rank in the kingdom of love." So he wrote 
down and sold for ^loo his " Liber Amoris." The book consists 
of three parts : first, conversations supposed to have been held be- 
tween the anonymous author and the girl ; second, extracts actually 
addressed to an unnamed friend (Patmore), in which are unfolded 
the passion, fury, and delusion of the writer, who declared the 
persistency of his devotion ; third, three letters to another friend 
(Sheridan Knowles), giving the conclusion of the affair — the 
treachery, wantonness, and hypocrisy of the girl who would have 
nothing to say to him, preferring the addresses of another lodger. 
As might be expected, such a book as the " Liber Amoris " pre- 
tended to be has met with a reception of mingled acquiescence 



INTRODUCTION XXXV 

and disgust. De Quincey ^ called it " an explosion of frenzy. 
He threw out his clamorous anguish to the clouds and to the 
winds and to the air, caring not who might listen, who might 
sympathize, or who might sneer — the sole necessity for him 
was to empty his overburdened spirit." Of various comments^ 
we quote only two, the first by Mrs. Jameson. " Of all the his- 
tories I have read of the aberrations of human passion, nothing 
ever struck me with a sort of amazed and painful pity as Hazlitt's 
' Liber Amoris.' The man was in love with a servant girl, who 
in the eyes of others possessed no particular charms of mind or 
person, yet did the mighty love of this strong, masculine, and 
gifted being lift her into a sort of goddess-ship and make his 
idolatry in its intense earnestness and reality assume something 
of the sublimity of an act of faith, a!id in its expression take a 
flight equal to anything that poetry or fiction have left us. It 
was all so terribly real, he sued with such a vehemence, he 
suffered with such resistance that the powerful intellect reeled, 
tempest-tost, and might have foundered but for the gift of 
expression." 

At the other extreme is Austin Dobson, who, we believe, has 
put the case more aptly and more nearly as it stands to-day. 
" The whole sentimental structure of the ' Liber Amoris ' now 
sinks below the stage and joins the realm of things unspeakable : 
' vile kitchen stuff, fit only for the midden.' " 

We may readily imagine the glee with which the Qiiatierly 
and Blackwood read this book, and recognized at once their 
victim. They put forth their best efforts, but nothing that they 
could conceive could injure the man who had already allowed to 
be printed a piece of such humiliating self -debasement. Perhaps 
some consolation may be gained from the fact that during this 
period Hazlitt wrote some of his best essays, and " his name 

1 Works, Vol. V, edited by Masson. 

2 See also American Whig Reviezv, January, 1847 ; Temple Bar, iSSi, p. 330 ; 
Academy^ September 7, 1S89 ; and Introduction to Le Gallienne's edition. 



xxxvi SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and character were but momentarily dimmed by what, indeed, 
was but a momentary delusion." ' 

Meantime one other affair seemed for a time to cast a shadow 
over Hazlitt. In 1820 the London Magazine was established, 
with John Scott as its editor, a very agreeable man and brilliant 
writer. The magazine included essays by Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, 
and Lamb. Soon after it had started, it made a furious onslaught 
upon Blackiuood, whether from a desire to court notoriety or to 
avenge some of the wrongs done to Hazlitt and others of their 
contributors. Lockhart, the son-in-law of Scott, editor of Black- 
wood, felt aggrieved, especially since his name had been men- 
tioned in the offending articles, and demanded an apology from 
Scott, who was supposed to be the author of the attacks. The 
affair went from bad to \t'orse. A duel was fought and Scott 
was mortally wounded.^ The circumstances were most distress- 
ing. Enemies of Hazlitt (especially the poet Campbell) tried to 
make the world believe that he had been the provoking cause of 
the duel, but no one to-day can find the slightest evidence to 
incriminate Hazlitt.^ 

Within two years after his divorce, in 1822, and his infatua- 
tion with Sarah Walker, he married again, apparently as unfor- 
tunately as before. His second wife was a Mrs. Bridgewater 
— it had been Sarah Shepherd, Sarah Stoddart, Sarah Walker, 
this time it was Isabella — the former wife of a Colonel Bridge- 
water, who had left her three hundred pounds a year. " A cynic 
might point a moral from the fact that the only events of Hazlitt's 
life which were utterly free from the intrusion of passion were 
his ventures into matrimony.'"' On September i, 1824, they 

1 Remark by his son. 

2 The duel took place at Chalk Farm, February 16, 1821. Scott died on the 
27th, leaving a wife and two children. 

3 The statements of Scott were printed in the London Magazine, February, 
1821. The whole question has been discussed by Mr. Andrew Lang in his 
" Life of Lockhart," I, 250 ff. 

•* Mr. Paul Elmer Moore's essay on Hazlitt in " Shelbume Essays," Vol. IL 



INTRODUCTION xxxvii 

started to the Continent, going through Paris, where they visited 
the galleries and saw some plays at the theaters ; thence to 
Lyon, Turin, Florence, Rome, Venice, through Switzerland, 
down the Rhine, through Holland, and thence home in October, 
1825. Mrs. Hazlitt, the second, informed her husband that she 
did not care to go home with him. She returned to Scotland ^ to 
live, while Hazlitt and his son, who had joined them somewhere 
on the Continent, came back to London. Sketches of the travels 
appeared in the Morning Chronicle and were subsequently 
published in 1826, with the title "Notes of a Journey through 
France and Italy." ^ These notes make very interesting reading. 
They describe scenes in his coach rides, visits to picture galler- 
ies, especially in Paris and Florence. They contain vivid de- 
scriptions of faces of^ people whom he sees on the way ; they 
express opinions on many subjects, and reveal a keen observer 
of the manners and customs of the people. He writes enthusi- 
astically of the great pictures, most eloquently of natural scenery 
in Italy and Switzerland. He is disappointed with Rome.^ 
" This is not the Rome I expected to see." He writes a splendid 
description of the illumination of St. Peter's and adds : " After 
all St. Peter's does not seem to me the chief boast or most im- 
posing display of the Catholic religion. Old Melrose Abbey, 
battered to pieces and in ruins as it is, impresses me much more 
than the collective pride and pomp of Michael Angelo's great 
work." He likes the palaces of Venice.* " I never saw palaces 
anywhere but at Venice." But, after all, he is glad to be back 
in England. " However delightful or striking the objects may 
be abroad, they do not take the same hold of you, nor can 
you identify yourself with them as at home." 

Under the lead of a cruel fate Hazlitt had set to work on a 
life of Napoleon. With blind obstinacy Hazlitt had idolized him 

1 We know almost nothing of this woman, not even her maiden name. 
Hazlitt met her in a stagecoach. She died in Scotland in 1S69. 

2 Works, IX, 83 ff. 3 Ibid. chap. xix. * Ibid. chap, xxiii. 



XXXviii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and regarded him as the veritable savior of the people. He 
had watched with great rejoicing his rise from obscurity into 
world-wide notoriety ; he had seen his idol subjected to most 
complete humiliation. In casting about for a subject of a work 
which he wished to leave as a monument he could conceive of 
nothing better than the defense of this picturesque hero. At 
Vevey, on his tour in 1825, he had confided his purpose to 
Medwin : ^ " I will write a Life of Napoleon, though it is yet too 
early ; some have a film before their eyes ; some want magnify- 
ing glasses ; none see him as he is in true proportion." For 
three years Hazlitt worked untiringly, giving what time he could 
spare from his more profitable miscellaneous essays. The task 
often oppressed him. In the preface, which at first was not 
printed as a preface, Hazlitt wrote : " There were two other 
feelings that influenced me on the subject — a love of glory, 
when it did not interfere with other things, and the wish to see 
personal merit prevail over external rank and circumstance. I 
felt pride (not envy) to think there was one reputation in mod- 
em times equal to the ancients, and at seeing one man greater 
than the throne he sat upon." The first two volumes were 
published in 1828 and the last two in 1830. The work attracted 
little attention, partly because it appeared subsequent to a life 
by Walter Scott (1827), a name to conjure with, but not of 
sufficient magic to sell a tedious and superficial life of an un- 
popular hero. Hazlitt's work met the same fate, partly because 
the subject was hateful to the public, and largely because Hazlitt 
was writing before time had cleared away the rancor of party 
strife. The " Life " had no sale, and, combined with the failure 
of the publishers, meant a total loss of profits for all the labor 
expended during three busy years. His loss was out of all pro- 
portion to the merit of the work, for though it had no rank as 
history, it possessed a style which is often brilliant in its vivid 
and picturesque description of characters and incidents. 

1 The friend of Byron in his " Conversation with Lord Byron," 1824. 



INTRODUCTION xxxix 

The remaining years of Hazlitt's life were without important 
incident. Since 1818 he had gone often to "The Hutt," a 
secluded tavern near Winterslow, and spent many a day alone, 
dreaming over the happy memories of the past and writing some 
of his most delightful essays. He liked to walk across the coun- 
try about Salisbury, over to Stonehenge, and through the lanes 
of Wiltshire. Glimpses of days spent there in summer and in 
winter appear in the essays, which come to be more personal 
and autobiographical. In London he lived first in one place, 
then in another — in Down Street, in Half Moon Street, in Bou- 
verie Street, and finally at No. 6 Frith Street, Soho. Poverty 
pressed upon him and kept him busily writing to the end. He 
had few friends, but he must work, and with his usual clear mind 
he wrote the last essays, "The Free Admission" and "The Sick 
Chamber," before the final summons. Through the summer of 
1830 he first knew the struggle with death. He longed for his 
mother, and begged that she might be brought to him, but she 
was eighty-four years old and in Devonshire, and could not 
come. The fight was not to be long. On the eighteenth of Sep- 
tember, 1830, he died in the presence of his son and his dearest 
friend, Charles Lamb. His last words seem strange, "Well, I 've 
had a happy life." 

Lamb, the best friend any man could ever have, summed it 
all up in his letter to Southey:^ "From the other gentleman 
[Hazlitt] I neither expect nor desire (as he is well assured) 
any such concessions. What hath soured him, and made him 
suspect his friends of infidelity towards him, when there was 
no such matter, I know not. I stood well with him for fifteen 
years (the proudest of my life) and have ever spoken my full 
mind of him to some to whom his panegyric must naturally be 
least tasteful. I never in thought swerved from him ; I never 
betrayed him ; I never slackened in my admiration of him ; I 
was the same to him (neither better nor worse), though he could 

1 First printed in London Magazine, October, 1823. 



xl SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

not see it, as in the days when he thought fit to trust me. At 
this instant he may be preparing for me some compliment above 
my deserts, as he has sprinkled many such among his admirable 
books, for which I rest his debtor ; or for anything I know or 
can guess to the contrary, he may be about to read a lecture on 
my weaknesses. He is welcome to them (as he was to my hum- 
ble hearth) if they can divert a spleen or ventilate a fit of sullen- 
ness. I wish he would not quarrel with the world at the rate he 
does ; but the reconciliation must be effected by himself, and I 
despair of living to see that day. But protesting against much 
that he has written and some things which he chooses to do ; 
judging him by his conversations, which I enjoyed so long and 
relished so deeply, or by his books, in those places where no 
clouding passion intervenes, I should belie my own conscience 
if I said less than that I think W. H. to be in his natural and 
healthy state one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. So 
far from being ashamed of that intimacy which was betwixt us, 
it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have pre- 
served it entire ; and I think I shall go to my grave without 
finding, or expecting to find, such another companion." 

With the true devotion of a sincere friend Lamb enjoyed 
Hazlitt's writing to the end of his life. Only a few months be- 
fore he died he said, " I can read no prose now, though Hazlitt 
sometimes, to be sure, but then Hazlitt's worth all modern prose 
writers put together." ^ 

Before we turn altogether from the life of Hazlitt we must 
quote a passage from Talfourd's- description of Hazlitt's per- 
sonal appearance : " In person, Mr. Hazlitt was of the middle 
size, with a handsome and eager countenance, worn by sickness 
and thought, and dark hair, which had curled stiffly over the 



1 Report of a breakfast at Crabb Robinson's, June 19, 1834, by N. P. Willis. 
See Lucas, " Life of Charles Lamb," p. 645. 

2 '" Literary Remains," p. xlvi. See also Patmore, " Friends and Acquaint- 
ances," 11, 302 ff. 



INTRODUCTION xli 

temples, and was only of late years sprinkled with grey. His gait 
was slouching and awkward, and his dress neglected ; but when 
he began to talk, he could not be mistaken for a common man. 
In the company of persons with whom he was not familiar, his 
bashfulness was painful ; but when he became entirely at ease, 
and entered on a favourite topic, no one's conversation was ever 
more delightful. He did not talk for effect, to dazzle, or surprise, 
or annoy, but with the most simple and honest desire to make his 
view of the subject entirely apprehended by his hearer. There 
was sometimes an obvious struggle to do this to his own satis- 
faction ; he seemed labouring to bring his thought to light from 
its deep lurking place ; and, with modest distrust of that power 
of expression which he had found so late in life, he often be- 
trayed a fear that he had failed to make himself understood, 
and recurred to the subject again and again, that he might be 
assured he had succeeded." 

II. AS CRITIC OF THE DRAMA 

Important among Hazlitt's writings are his criticisms of the 
stage. Not only were they his first continuous work after he 
devoted himself to the pursuit of literature, but they marked an 
epoch in the history of theatrical criticism. Before Hazlitt's 
time the honest reviews of plays were not known. Leigh Hunt 
knew the situation, perhaps, better than any man, and described 
it in his "Autobiography." ^ " Puffing and plenty of tickets were 
the system of the day. It was an interchange of amenities over 
the dinner table, a flattery of power on the one side and puns 
on the other, and what the public took for a criticism on a play 
was a draft upon the box office or reminiscence of last Thurs- 
day's salmon and lobster sauce. The custom was to write as 
short and as favorable a paragraph on the new piece as could 
be ; to say that Bannister was ' excellent ' and Miss Jordan 

1 " Autobiography," chap, vii, p. 152. 



xlii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

' charming ' ; to notice the crowded house or invent it, if neces- 
sary ; and to conclude by observing that ' the whole went off 
with eclat.' " Leigh Hunt saw the opportunity for a new de- 
partment, and when the Examiner appeared, introduced as one 
of its most popular features a succession of appreciative com- 
ments on plays, actors, and theaters. The Examiner was a 
weekly journal, independent in politics and strongly radical, but 
in such troublous times soon came to grief by its publication 
of libelous articles. For the attacks on the prince regent its 
editors, John and Leigh Hunt, were imprisoned in February, 
1813. Though the confinement did not interfere with the pub- 
lication of the paper, it prevented Hunt from seeing plays. ^ 

Hazlitt had the good fortune to be in London in the position 
as parliamentary reporter on the Morning Chronicle, the lead- 
ing Whig paper, which was owned and edited by James Perry. 
Both Perry and Hazlitt saw the opportunity for the new line of 
criticism, and to Hazlitt was delegated the new work. 

He wrote his first criticism for the issue of October 18, 18 13, 
and contributed to that paper some of his best articles, such as 
those on Mrs. Siddons, Kean, and other famous actors. The 
inevitable conflict, however, which has often happened between 
the man of business and the man of genius, was not long post- 
poned, and ended by bringing to a close Hazlitt's connection 
with Perry's paper on May 27, 18 14. Miss Mary Russell Mit- 
ford^ knew both men and wrote in her letter: " I was at Tavi- 
stock House and very well remember the doleful visage with 
which Mr. Perry used to contemplate the long column of criti- 
cism, and how he used to execrate ' the damned fellow's damned 

1 This was a splendid era for the English stage. The Kembles — Charles, 
John, and Mrs. Siddons — were at their zenith. Suett, Munden, Bannister, Mathew, 
Elliston, Liston, Booth, Young, and Master Betty were conspicuous in plays of 
the Elizabethan period, of the Restoration, and of the eighteenth century. 

For a sketch of theatrical conditions of the time, see Introduction to " The 
Dramatic Essays of Leigh Hunt," edited by Archer and Lowe. 

2 " Life of Mary Russell Mitford," edited by L 'Estrange, 11,47. See also 
Hazlitt's essay, " On Patronage and Puffing," Works, VI, 292. 



INTRODUCTION xliii 

stuff ' for filling up so much of the paper in the very height of 
the advertisement season. I shall never forget his long face. 
It was the only time of the day that I ever saw it long or sour. 
He had not the slightest suspicion that he had a man of genius " 
in his pay, not the most remote perception of the merit of writ- 
ing, nor the slightest companionship with the author. He hired 
him as you hire your footman, and turned him off (with as little 
or less ceremony than you would use in discharging the afore- 
said worthy personage) for a very masterly critique on Sir 
Thomas Lawrence, whom Mr. Perry, as one whom he visited 
and was being painted by, chose to have praised." 

From the Chiviiich Hazlitt turned to Hunt's paper, the 
Examiner. His first criticism in that paper appeared in July, 
1814. He wrote a few articles in the following summer and 
became the regular critic from March 19, 18 15, to June 8, 
18 1 7. During the autumn of 18 14 Hazlitt was regularly em- 
ployed by the Champion., a weekly edited by John Scott. This 
engagement lasted from August 14, 18 14, to January 8, 18 15. 
From the summer of 18 17 to the spring of 18 18 he wrote for 
the Times articles on Shakspere's plays and other well-known 
plays. ^ His high regard for the Times was afterwards expressed 
in his advice for " any one who has an ambition to write and 
to write his best in the periodical press, to get, if he can, a 
position in the Times newspaper, the editor of which is a man 
of business and not a man of letters. He may write there as 
long and as good articles as he can without being turned out 
of it."- 

During these years Hazlitt wrote miscellaneous essays for the 
periodicals to which he was contributing, and he prepared for 
publication two books, which consisted largely of his dramatic 
criticisms, "Characters of Shakespear's Plays" (181 7) and 
"View of the English Stage" (1818). The latter volume was 

1 " Memoirs," II, 310 ; " Literary Remains," p. xlv. 

2 Preface to "View of the Englisli Stage," Works, VIII, 174. 



xliv SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

simply a collection of articles which had appeared in the Chroni- 
cle, Champion, Examiner, and the Times. When the London 
Magazine was established in January, 1820, under the editorship 
of John Scott,^ Hazlitt undertook to write an article each month - 
on the acted drama in London. The second edition^ of the 
" View of the English Stage " included a large part of these 
essays, though many personages were omitted, and what re- 
mained was sometimes changed. 

For his work as theatrical critic Hazlitt could not be said to 
have had special training. He had not " grown up in the green 
room." When he was twelve years of age he had seen at 
Liverpool* "Love in Many Masks," and a farce "No Song, No 
Supper," performed byKemble, Suett, Dignum, Miss Romanzini, 
and others. In 1796 he had seen John Kemble as Coriolanus, 
he had come to know the actor Liston, but he had never been 
a regular playgoer.^ During the winter of 1 802-1 803, while he 
worked in the Louvre, Paris, we have no record of his attend- 
ance at any theater. He may have seen plays at Shrewsbury 
during the years which he spent at home in Wem, but of this 
we know nothing. After his meeting with Lamb the two 
together went occasionally to the theater, as we learn from 
Mary Lamb's letters. On the fourth or sixth of July, 1806, she 
wrote to Sarah Stoddart : " They [Charles and Hazlitt] came 
home from Sadler's Wells so dismal and dreary dull on Friday 
evening that I gave them both a good scolding, quite a setting 
to rights, and I think it has done some good, for Charles has 
been very cheerful ever since." On the tenth of the following 

1 See above, p. xxxvi. 

2 Hazlitt wrote ten articles ; none appeared in November, and the article for 
October was not by Hazlitt. The content of each of these papers was given in 
the December issue. 3 1S21. 

4 See above, p. xiii ; " Memoirs," p. 17. See also "The New School of Re- 
form," Works, VII, 179. 

5 Before he became a critic of the stage he admitted he had not been at the 
theater " more than a half-a-dozen times " in his life. See " Letter-Bell," Works, 
XII, 235. 



INTRODUCTION xlv 

December^ they sat together in the pit to see Lamb's farce, 
" Mr. H.," condemned to oblivion. Knowing Lamb's fondness 
for the theater, we may assume that they went for an occasional 
evening to see some favorite actor. After his marriage and 
removal to the country he made only a rare visit to London till 
he and his wife returned in iSii or 1812. 

Hazlitt's criticisms of the theater ^ are a fair guide to the 
theaters, plays, and players of his time. He wrote of Drury 
Lane, Covent Garden, Haymarket, Lyceum, The King's Thea- 
ter and the minor theaters, the Surrey, Adelphi, the Coburg, The 
Aquatic, The East London. He discussed winter and summer 
plays, pantomimes, operas, and oratorios. He reviewed not only 
his favorite plays, " Hamlet," " Macbeth," " Cymbeline," " Rich- 
ard in," "Romeo and Juliet," "Everyman in his Humour," 
" School for Scandal," " Beggar's Opera," " New Way to pay 
Old Debts," but all of Shakspere's dramas and a large number 
of Restoration and eighteenth-century plays. He loved the 
Kembles, he discovered Kean for the London public, praised 
Macready, Booth, Bannister, Miss Stephens, and Mrs. Siddons,^ 
and in all his criticism he was fair and, above all, discriminating. 

Qualifications for a capable critic of the stage Hazlitt certainly 
had. He liked the stage. " We like the stage because we like 
to talk about ourselves." He liked it because it was " the text 
and school of humanity." " We do not much like any person 
or persons who do not like plays." Furthermore, he read widely 

1 See " On Great and Little Things," Works, VI, 232. 

2 Hazlitt's essays, which may be considered in general as dramatic criticism, are 
as follows: "On Modern Comedy," "Mr. Kean's lago," "On 'Midsummer Night's 
Dream,' " " On the ' Beggar's Opera,' " " On Actors and Acting " in Works,Vol. I ; 
" Characters of Shakespear's Plays," in Vol. V ; " Dramatic Writers Contemporary 
with Shakspere," in Vol.VI; "On Patronage and Puffing," "Whether Actors ought 
to sit in Boxes," "On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority," "On Great 
and Little Things"; "A View of the English Stage," "Miscellaneous Dramatic 
Essays," "The English Comic Writers" (Chaps. ii,iii,iv,viii in Vol. VIII). 

3 " I observed that of all the women I had ever seen or known anything of, 
Mrs. Siddons struck me as the grandest " (" Conversations of James Northcote," 
Works, VI, 333). 



xlvi SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and wisely in the drama of the Elizabethan era, the Restoration, 
and the eighteenth century. Again, he had a high conception 
of his duty as critic both to the player and to the public. 
" Though I do not repent of what I have said in praise of cer- 
tain actors, yet I wish I could retract what I have been obliged 
to say in reprobation of actors. ... I never understood that 
the applauded actor thought himself personally obliged to the 
newspaper critic ; the latter was merely supposed to do his 
duty." ^ He praised Kean because he saw in him a genius. 
This favorable notice " produced a great impression and gave 
rise to the report, absolutely without foundation, that the critic 
had received ;!{J'i5oo from the management of Drury Lane to 
puff Kean." ^ Finally, the enthusiasm and eloquence of Hazlitt's 
style took hold of people and made his favorable reviews much 
sought after both by the player and the playgoer. 

That his theatrical notes make good reading now after almost 
a hundred years may not be a compliment upon their value as 
dramatic criticism. Indeed, their bookishness has always been 
noted. He liked above everything the play which he could read. 
True he reveled in the memories of the good past days at the 
theater ; he was thrilled by the eloquence of Kemble and Kean, 
and he liked the crowd of " happy faces in the pit," and the 
atmosphere of the playhouse. He watched closely the entrances 
and exits of the actors, their eyes, faces, hands ; listened for the 
cadences of the spoken sentences, and marked the differences in 
an actor on successive evenings. He rarely analyzed the play as 
a play — he was not concerned with the technique of the verse ; 
he was interested in the series of fine speeches and the groups 
of diversified characters. He did not give a well-rounded com- 
ment of the play, but a eulogy of Kemble as Sir Giles Over- 
reach, Miss O'Neill as Lady Teazle, Mrs. Siddons as Lady 
Macbeth, Macready as Othello, Kean as lago or Shylock or 

1 " Dramatic Essays," Works, VIII, 177. 

2 Birrell, " Life of Hazlitt," p. 109. 



INTRODUCTION xlvil 

Richard III. He thought Shakspere too great for the stage ! 
" Not only are the more refined poetical beauties, the minuter 
strokes of character, lost to the audience, but the most striking 
and impressive passages, those which having once read we can 
never forget, fail comparatively of their effect except in one or 
two instances." He enjoyed the old plays, the great actors, much 
as he liked old books or some striking incident of his youth. 

III. AS CRITIC OF PAINTING 

In his relation to the art of painting^ Hazlitt stood alone 
among his contemporaries. From his birth he had been associ- 
ated with painters ; he had studied in the Louvre ; he had talked 
art with Flaxman, Northcote, and Haydon ; he had read the 
works of Richardson and Sir Joshua Reynolds ; finally, he had 
been a painter. How well qualified he was by nature and train- 
ing to write of the art of painting can best be seen in his pages 
of criticism. No one of his contemporaries was his equal, either 
in natural aptitude or knowledge of what the painter was trying 
to do. Hazlitt never thought out in his criticisms of painting, 
any more than he did in his criticisms of the drama, the princi- 
ples that underlie the art. Certain principles he insisted upon, 
it is true, but they were not formally fashioned into a system. 
They were some of his feelings about art. " Art must be true 
to nature." This was, first of all, important. The lesson to be 
learned from the Elgin marbles^ was " that the chief excellence 
of the figures depends on their having been copied from nature, 

1 The writings of Hazlitt which deal with painting especially are the following : 
In "Table Talk," "On the Pleasure of Painting," "On Certain Inconsistencies 
in Sir Joshua Reynold's Discourses," " On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin," 
"On the Picturesque and Ideal," Works, Vol. VI; "Conversations of James 
Northcote," Works, Vol. VI ; in " Plain Speaker," " On Sitting for One's Picture," 
"On a Portrait of an English Lady," Works, Vol. VII; on the "Works of 
Hogarth," Works, Vol. VIII; "The Principal Picture Galleries in England," 
Works, Vol. IX ; " Notesof a Journey through France and Italy," Works, Vol. IX ; 
" Miscellaneous Essays on the Fine Arts," Works, Vol. IX. 

2 " On the Elgin Marbles," Works, IX, 326. 



xlviii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and not from imagination." Pictures must have a meaning, they 
must express something. He liked to talk about " the poetry of 
Passion," " the learning of Titian." It is significant that he 
included Hogarth among the " comic writers of the eighteenth 
century." 

In his criticism of painting as of the drama, he tried to be 
honest and fair. He did not hesitate to defend a rising young 
artist, and thus gave encouragement to such men as Wilson, 
Haydon, and Turner. Of the latter he wrote, before Ruskin was 
born, " In landscape Turner has shown a knowledge of the 
effects of air and of powerful relief in objects which was never 
surpassed." He turned his contemporaries to Hogarth. He 
was as ready to point out a fault in Claude or Poussin, whom 
he idolized, as he was to extol a virtue in Haydon or Wilson. 

The pleasure of it all was the thing. It was to him inexpres- 
sible joy to be able to see the masters in Paris and in Florence, 
and to go again and again to the collection at Burleigh House 
and to take Lamb to Oxford and to Blenheim. This went along 
with his delight in creating for himself, of which he wrote appre- 
ciatively in his splendid essays, " On the Pleasure of Painting." 
" My taste in pictures is, I believe, very different from that of 
rich and princely collectors. ... I should like to have a few 
pictures hung round the room that speak to me with well-known 
looks, that touch some string of memory — not a number of 
varnished, smooth, glittering gew-gaws." This joy of associa- 
tion with pictures he was able constantly to communicate to 
others. At a time when little attention was paid to art criticism, 
Hazlitt " claimed for it the dignity of a branch of literature and 
expended on it the wealth of his ever-fervid and impassioned 
imagination." ^ 

In estimating Hazlitt as a critic of painting we should re- 
member the changes which have occurred in the vocabulary of 

1 Gosse's preface to his edition of " Conversations of James Northcote," 
p. xxvii. 



INTRODUCTION xlix 

art criticism, as well as the priority of Hazlitt's work and his 
recognition of the fact that few of his readers would ever see 
the pictures which he described. Hazlitt helped people to enjoy 
pictures, and to enjoy the picturesque in the world about. " I 
am a slave to the picturesque," he wrote once. He saw about 
him the charm of line and color, and could describe with power- 
ful vividness any face which had impressed him. 



IV. AS CRITIC OF BOOKS AND MEN 

In a most interesting essay on Hazlitt, Professor Saintsbury^ 
has written : " He was in literature a great man. I am myself 
disposed to think that for all his excess of hopelessly uncritical 
prejudice he was the greatest critic that England has yet pro- 
duced." Whether we agree wholly with this estimate we must 
admit him into the select group of three or four best English 
critics. The range of his criticism of books is practically the 
whole of English literature." With interest and appreciation he 
has touched every period, with boundless enthusiasm and dis- 
crimination he has described especially the drama of the Resto- 
ration and the periodical essayists and novelists of the eighteenth 
century. He admired the great writers, Chaucer, Spenser, Shak- 
spere, and Milton, and wrote of them with hearty appreciation. 
Most certainly he was not radical or revolutionary in his literary 
heroes, and yet he did not hesitate to speak out openly when he 
saw merit. For the writers of the Queen Anne period he had 
especial praise. He appreciated with rare intelligence their 
forceful prose, and considered the style of Swift and Arbuthnot 
as well-nigh model prose. Indeed, his remarks on these writings 

1 G. E. Saintsbury, " Essays on English Literature." 

2 Hazlitt's criticism of literature is comprised chiefly of the following : 
"Characters of Shakespear's Plays" (1817), "Lectures on the English Poets" 
(1S18), "Lectures on the English Comic Writers" (1819), "Lectures on the 
Dramatic Literature of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth" (1820), "The Spirit of 
the Age" (1825). 



1 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

might very well serve as a manual for clear and effective com- 
position. He preferred Steele to Addison, Thomson to Cowper, 
Gay to Prior. He saw Pope's excellence without requiring him 
to conform to the standards fixed for poetry at any one time. 
He liked Blair's " Grave," Butler's " Hudibras," Warton's son- 
nets, Suckling's poems. He was passionately fond of Congreve, 
Ossian, Burke's prose, Scott's novels, and the novels of the pre- 
ceding century. His criticism was largely personal. " There are 
people who cannot taste olives — and I cannot much relish Ben 
Jonson, though I have taken some pains to do it, and went to 
the task with every sort of good will." He was influenced very 
largely by his private associations and by his sympathy for the 
character of the writer. Nevertheless, in the criticism of his con- 
temporaries in " The Spirit of the Age " he was uncommonly 
fair, and few of his judgments need to be revised a hundred 
years afterwards. He did not appreciate Shelley and Keats, 
but wrote most intelligently and appreciatively of the poetry 
of Wordsworth and Coleridge, the novels of Scott, and the 
prose of Burke, though he had harsh things to say of them as 
men. Wordsworth was " the most original poet now living " ; 
Coleridge was " the only man I ever knew who answered to the 
idea of a man of genius " ; Scott was " the greatest, wisest, 
meanest ... of mankind " ; Gifford was " a low-bred, self- 
taught, servile pedant, a doorkeeper and a lacquey to learning." 
Apparently Hazlitt was trying to follow the lead of one whom 
he greatly admired — "Montaigne may be said to have been 
the first who had the courage to say as an author what he felt 
as a man." Allowing for prejudices, however, we should have 
difficulty to find another critic who has shown such breadth of 
interest as to include with such just appreciation so many 
writers so widely separated in time and in achievement. 

The contemporaries of Hazlitt attempted to silence him as 
a critic by pointing to his lack of reading and the repetitions 
which recurred so frequently in his work. To these men Hazlitt 



INTRODUCTION H 

replied : " I have been found fault with for repeating myself, 
and for a narrow range of ideas. To a want of general reading I 
plead guilty and am sorry for it, but perhaps if I had read more 
I might have thought less." ^ Such a characteristic remark! 
Hazlitt did not wish to have a mere literary reputation ; he 
despised those who had their ideas from books alone. Never- 
theless, besides an extensive reading of English literature — 
who of his day had read more widely in the literature of his 
own language .' he knew some of Schiller's plays, Rousseau, 
Montaigne, Le Sage's "Gil Bias," Rabelais, Dante, Boccaccio, 
and " Don Quixote." . . . Most of these he knew intimately — 
a meager list one has to admit, but not unworthy. It is well for 
us who live in the day when there are too many books and 
too few careful readers to remember what we have just quoted, 
" If I had read more, I should have thought less." 

In his thinking and his writing Hazlitt had never hit upon 
historical or philosophical criticism.^ He was an emotional critic. 
By his criticism of Milton's sonnets he expressed his aim — 
" picking out the beautiful passages that I like." ^ " Taste is 
ability to appreciate genius " ; " Fine taste consists in sympathy" ; 
" He who finds out what there is in a picture rather than he who 
finds what there is not " ; "So that the ultimate and only con- 
clusive proof of taste is not indifference but enthusiasm " — 
these are the keynotes of his essay " On Taste." Critics were 
to be the tasters for the public. " A genuine criticism should, 
as I take it, reflect the colors, the light and shade, the soul and 
body of a work." " In the criticisms written on the model of 
the French school about a century ago ... we are left quite in 
the dark as to the feelings of pleasure or pain to be derived 
from the genius of the performance or the manner in which it 
appeals to the imagination ; we know to a nicety how it squares 

1 " Memoirs," II, 259. 

2 For his ideas on criticism see essays " On Taste," Works, XI, 450 ff., and 
" On Criticism," Works, VI, 214 ; also " On Periodical Essayists," pp. 9 ff. 

3 " On Milton's Sonnets," Works, VI, 174. 



lii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

with the thread-bare rules of composition, not in the least how 
it affects the principles of taste." ^ " Why trouble Pope or 
any other author for what they have not and do not profess 
to give? " All sound and true. According to Hazlitt, his friend 
Joseph Fawcett was an ideal critic. " He had a masterly per- 
ception of all styles and of every kind and every degree of 
excellence. . . . He did not care a rush whether a writer was 
old or new, in prose or in verse — ' What he wanted,' he said, 
' was something to make him think.' " " He gave a cordial 
welcome to all sorts, provided they were the best in their kind." 
These extracts show with sufficient clearness that Hazlitt aimed 
at no analytical method in his criticism. He does not belong 
to the modern school of metaphysical critics who " suppose the 
question Why .' to be repeated at the end of every decision ; 
and the answer gives birth to interminable arguments and dis- 
cussion." Nor is there in Hazlitt insistence upon the historical 
estimates. He is content with good work well done. " If a 
man leaves behind him any work which is a model of its kind, 
we have no right to ask whether he could do anything else or 
how he did it, or how long he was about it." " 

Hazlitt contributed little to the group of critical principles 
which from time to time in the last hundred years have been 
enunciated with greater or less clearness. Of poetry he wrote, 
" Many people suppose that poetry is something to be found 
only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables, with like end- 
ings, but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or har- 
mony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the growth of 
a flower that spreads its sweet leaves through the air, and dedi- 
cates its beauty to the sun, there is poetry. . . . Poetry is not 
a branch of authorship ; it is the stuff of which our life is 
made." ^ This was a long step beyond the critics of the preced- 
ing century, such as Johnson, or even Addison, who would not 

1 " On Criticism," Works, VI, 217. 

2 " On Genius and Common Sense," Works, VI, 31. 3 See p. 35. 



INTRODUCTION liii 

listen to a definition of poetry which did not hedge it within 
fixed rules and requirements. The first expression of modern 
critical principles was the publication of the Prefaces by Words- 
worth, in which he discussed the relation of Imagination and 
Fancy. This discussion, which had come from Lessing, Richter, 
and A. W. Schlegel, did not interest Hazlitt. Richter distin- 
guished Imagination as the faculty of genius which constructs 
organic wholes, from Fancy which forms arbitrary aggregates. 
The union of opposites became the fundamental formula of 
romantic art. Hence there was no inconsistency in the combina- 
tion of tragedy and comedy, of humor and pathos, in a single 
play. With this conception Hazlitt was in perfect accord. 
" Poetry is the stuff of which our life is made." Coleridge, how- 
ever, went farther. He recognized the need of order and rules 
— • " Poetry must embody, in order to reveal itself," and unlike 
the eighteenth-century revisers of Shakspere who wished to 
leave out or smooth over the irregularities of the Elizabethan 
dramatists, Coleridge looked for the reason of the so-called 
irregularities, and he wished not to make Shakspere over but 
to find and to understand the evidences of organic structure. 
Coleridge passed the torch on to Carlyle, who not only searched 
for the central and vivifying purpose with proper historical per- 
spective, but he wished to emphasize the dynamic quality of the 
work and make it exercise its influence on the thought and lives 
of men. In his essay on Goethe he wrote, " To determine 
with any infallibility whether what we call a fault is in very deed 
a fault, we must have settled two points, first what the poet's 
aim really was, and how far this aim accorded, not with us and 
our individual crotchets, but with human nature, and the nature 
of things at large ; with the principles of poetic beauty, as 
they stand written, not in our text-books but in the hearts and 
imaginations of all men." 

Such as it was — and a very good kind, if not the best — 
the criticism of Hazlitt performed a great service. He interested 



liv SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

people in fields hitherto almost untrodden ; he taught his readers 
that they had within themselves powers of appreciation of which 
they had not dreamed ; he gave new encouragement to the 
author who saw for the first time the possibility of a large and 
sympathetic reading public ; and finally he sharpened the critical 
faculties of his readers and introduced a new enthusiasm into 
reading and talking about books. His judgments have formed 
a remarkably large amount of the present estimate of much of 
English literature. Indeed, it is difficult to name an English 
critic who has succeeded in this particular to an equal degree. 
Of him Harriet Martineau wrote, " In Hazlitt we lost the Prince 
of Critics of his time, and after he was gone there were many 
who would never look at a picture, or see a tragedy, or ponder 
a point of morals, or take a survey of any public character with- 
out a melancholy sense of loss in Hazlitt's absence and silence." ^ 
There could be no more fitting conclusion to our discussion of 
Hazlitt as a critic than the words of Thackeray.^ " Hazlitt was 
one of the keenest and brightest critics that ever lived. With 
partialities and prejudices innumerable, he had a wit so keen, 
a sensibility so exquisite, an appreciation of humor or pathos or 
even of the greatest act so lively, quick, and cultivated, that it 
was always good to know what were the impressions made by 
books or men or pictures on such a mind ; and that, as there 
were not probably a dozen men in England with powers so 
varied, all the rest of the world might be rejoiced to listen to 
the opinions of this accomplished critic." 

V. AS PERSONAL ESSAYIST 

To many readers Hazlitt is most interesting as a writer of 
miscellaneous essays and more especially as the personal and 
autobiographical essayist. The mention of a half dozen of his 

1 Harriet Martineau, " History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace," 
Book IV, chap. xiv. 

2 A review of the " Spirit of the Age " in the Morning Chronicle, 1845. 



INTRODUCTION Iv 

titles calls up some of our happiest memories of books — " My 
First Acquaintance with Poets," " On Going a Journey," 
"A Farewell to Essay-Writing," " The Feeling of Immortality 
in Youth," '' On the Pleasure of Painting," " On Reading Old 
Books," or " Of Persons One would Wish to have Seen." It 
is doubtless of such as these that Stevenson was thinking when 
he said, " We are all mighty fine fellows, but we cannot write 
like Hazlitt." ^ 

Again there are those suggested by a philosophical or ethical 
theme, " On Thought and Action," " Why Distant Objects 
Please," " On the Knowledge of Character," " On the Fear of 
Death," " On the Past and Future," " On Living to One's-Self," 
" On Effeminacy of Character," " On Conduct of Life," " The 
Spirit of Obligation," " On Antiquity," '' On Great and Little 
Things," " On Personal Identity," " Self-Love and Benevolence," 
" Main Chance," " On a Sun-Dial," " On the Feeling of Immor- 
tality "; then an occasional paper on the foibles or peculiarities of 
people, " Ignorance of the Learned," " On People with One 
Idea," " On the Pleasures of Hating," " On Vulgarity and 
Affectation," " On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority," 
"' On Consistency of Opinion," " On Disagreeable People," 
" Londoners and Country People," " On Editors," and " On the 
Shyness of Scholars"; a few that are entertaining for views 
on writing and criticism, " On Taste," " On Criticism," " On 
Familiar Style," " On the Aristocracy of Letters," "The Pic- 
turesque and the Ideal," " On the Judging of Pictures," " On 
Application to Study " ; a group, perhaps the most delightful, 
which abound in intimate personal reminiscences, " My First 
Acquaintance with Poets," " On the Conversation of Authors," 
"Of Persons One would Wish to have Seen," "On the Pleasure 



1 A few of Stevenson's titles suggest a closer bond of sympathy between the 
two sentimentalists than we usually suspect ; for example, " On Walking Tours," 
"Xalks and Talkers," "Crabbed Age and Youth," "An Apology for Idlers," 
" Truth of Intercourse," " On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places." 



Ivi SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

of Painting," " The Free Admission," " Sitting for One's Pic- 
ture," " The Sick Chamber," " The Letter Bell," " The Fight." 
These last essays are Hazlitt at his best. They form his criticism 
of life and of life at its fullest — not morbid, cynical, or pessi- 
mistic. Unlike Swift, he liked man, and took a pleasure in ridi- 
culing the everyday foibles of men. He was most fond of quoting 
the splendid line from Shakspere, " Our life is of mingled yarn, 
good and ill together." What he liked were the things of good 
report. If he was bitter toward the world, these essays do not 
show his bitterness ; if he hated men, it was because of supposed 
injustice, deception, hypocrisy, or oppression. His essays express 
vividly the philosophy of the everyday life, hinting now and then 
at the mystery which stands just at our elbows, detecting the 
peccadillos that beset mankind, analyzing with clever observation 
the motives of the commonplace, and adorning the apparently 
trivial with poetic imagination. 

As a critic of men, we think of Hazlitt along with Swift and 
Thackeray. He was not so great as either in the depth of insight 
or the vigor of expression, but, like them, he was never insipid 
and as deeply hated sham and snobbery. The summary of Pro- 
fessor Winchester is so admirable that we quote a long passage : 
" We see in his essays an intellect disciplined and broadened by 
long thought, enriched by the best reading and by early and in- 
timate acquaintance with two or three of the ablest men of that 
generation ; a vivid imagination and a quick eye for beauty ; a 
temper flashing into anger at opposition or softened to melancholy 
by failure, yet constant to the ideals of youth ; a vein of perver- 
sity which always liked the back side of a truth and the under- 
side of a quarrel, and a gift of phrase ranging from caustic 
epigram to lofty eloquence. And in his egotism there is no 
Byronic posing nor any braggart quality ; it is frank, naive, 
almost unconscious."^ 

1 C. T. Winchester, " A Group of English Essayists," p. 67. , 



INTRODUCTION Ivii 

VI. HAZLITT'S STYLE 

As a bit of advice to writers Stevenson once said, " I should 
like them to read Hazlitt, there 's a lot of style in Hazlitt." ^ One 
of the first impressions of his writing is his ease. He does not 
hesitate for a word. His friends often spoke of his preparedness, 
as he seemed to them always to have thought out beforehand 
just what he wished to say. Once the keynote was struck, he 
went straight to the point. What labor it implied to have 
acquired this habit he once described : " Oh, how little do they 
know who have never done anything but repeat after others by 
rote, the labor, the yearnings and misgivings of mind it costs to 
get the germ of an original idea, to dig it out of the hidden 
recesses of thought and nature and to bring it half-ashamed, 
struggling, and deformed into the day — to give words and intel- 
ligible symbols to that which was never imagined or expressed 
before." At first this ease and facility were slow in coming. As 
a boy he despaired of ever having the ability to speak and to 
write easily and effectively.^ His reading of Burke's " Letter to 
a Noble Lord " first revealed to him the power of expression. 
From that day it throve, but beset with great difficulty and dis- 
couragement. Thenceforth it grew and became the source of 
envy to his contemporaries.^ He described this growing power : 
" When I first began to write for the newspapers, I had not till 
then been in the habit of writing at all, or had been a long time 
about it ; but I perceived that with the necessity, the fluency 
came. Something I did took, and I was called upon to do a 
number of things all at once. I was in the middle of the stream, 
and must sink or swim.""* He wrote well of countless subjects. 

1 J. A. Hammerton, " Stevensoniana," 1903, pp. 1S2-184. 

2 See above, p. xviii. 

3 "Application to Study," Works, VII; "Indian Jugglers,'' "On Familiar 
Style," " On Genius and Common Sense," " On the Pleasure of Painting," 
Works, VI; "Writing and Speaking," Works, VI. 

4 " Northcote's Conversations," Works, VI, 253. 



Iviii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Now there were " purple patches," again his style became chaste 
and reserved, beautiful and picturesque, always interesting. He 
wrote of what he liked and in the way he liked, and so with 
enthusiasm, but never with insipidity. Perhaps he was illogical 
and prejudiced, but he was never willfully untruthful or dishonest. 
He always treated his reader fairly and never deigned to resort 
to tricks or sophistry. He abhorred the sham in diction. " I 
hate anything that occupies more space than it is worthy. I hate 
to see a load of bandboxes go along the street, and I hate to see 
a parcel of big words without anything in them." No one was 
a greater stickler for pure speech. " I do not say I would not 
use any phrase that had been brought into fashion before the 
middle or end of the last century, but I should be shy of using 
any that had not been employed by any approved author during 
the whole of that period." ^ Unlike Carlyle he coined no German- 
English hybrids ; unlike De Quincey, he refused to be tempted 
by slang, and no one would deny to his diction either clearness 
or simplicity on the one hand, or beauty and picturesqueness on 
the other. Where is the writer of English who can better show 
how the pure English word can be welded into an effective tool ? 
Hazlitt was fond of the apt phrase, and once it was conceived 
he used it again and again, but not with the pedantic effect which 
often characterized Arnold at his best. Because it pleased him, 
Hazlitt was content. He adorned his style with striking figures, 
but seldom used a more formal figure than the simile, metaphor, 
or contrast. The majestic apostrophe of De Quincey, or the 
elaborate personification of Carlyle, would ill have become the 
informal, personal style of Hazlitt. His was the master hand in 
the skill of compressing into a single phrase the character of a 
man or a work of literature. " Mrs. Montague's conversation is 
as fine cut as her features, and I like to sit in the room with that 
sort of coronet face. What she says leaves a flavour like green' 
tea. Hunt's is like champagne and Northcote's like anchovy 

1 " On Familiar Style," p. 159. 



INTRODUCTION lix 

sandwiches, Haydon's is like a game of trapball, Lamb's like 
snapdragon, and my own is not very much unlike a game of 
ninepins." His pages sparkle with a thousand things that we 
should like to have thought of. He admired La Rochefoucauld 
and wrote a number of excellent maxims. To systematic think- 
ing he was not well suited. The phrase and sentence rather 
than the paragraph were his norm. 

He had a wealth of illustration in the form of allusion to 
scores of favorite books or plays, to oft-remembered incidents 
of his early life, or timely anecdotes which he recalled. They 
were not whimsical like Lamb's, or colloquial like Hunt's, or 
suggestive of mystery like De Quincey's, but he never allowed 
an allusion to draw the reader from the theme in hand. His 
habit of repeated quotation has caused irritation to many a 
reader, who felt it ar sacrilege to dissociate a line of Shakspere 
from its lofty context, but he sought justification in the manner 
in which he made the quotation convey his own idea. 

One characteristic marks his style more than another ; it was 
his use of the parallel construction. He liked to join his subjects 
in pairs ; for example, cant and hypocrisy, past and future, wit 
and humor, thought and action, genius and common sense, 
patronage and puffing, writing and speaking, and so on ad iti- 
Jinitum. So his favorite manner of elucidating his theme was 
by contrast ; for example, Wilkie and Hogarth, Shakspere and 
Jonson, Chaucer and Spenser, Voltaire and Swift, Thomson 
and Cowper, Addison and Steele, Gray and Collins, Dryden and 
Pope. In this he had great influence on Macaulay, the master 
of contrast. He also has had a subtle influence upon modern 
criticism, which has often used this means of defining the 
relative importance of English writers. Thus the style of Hazlitt 
matured into a medium which has not been surpassed for 
clearness since the days of Swift, and for eloquence has been 
rarely equaled since the days of Sir Thomas Browne and 
Jeremy Taylor. 



Ix SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

The model of Hazlitt's style was Burke, the herald of nine- 
teenth-century prose. The fervor of Burke was transferred in 
Hazlitt into personal enthusiasm ; the clear, intellectual prose 
of the best eighteenth-century writers developed in Hazlitt a 
style simple, pointed, and epigrammatic. Since Swift, Burke's 
was the best prose st^de, Hazlitt's the best essay style. The 
possibilities of prose Burke never foresaw — the wit of Sydney 
Smith, the elegance of De Quincey, the whimsicality of Lamb, 
the spiritual vigor of Carlyle, the splendid, architectural, sym- 
metry of Macaulay. 

In the first half of the nineteenth century Macaulay was 
directly indebted to Hazlitt. Between these two men there is a 
kinship which the casual reader may not at first distinguish. In 
both we observe the prominence of the parallel construction — 
the same tendency toward epigrammatic expression, the same 
underlying determination to write with unmistakable clearness. 
In the second half of the century Newman's writing bore ample 
testimony to the romantic mood of which it was so evident 
Hazlitt was a contemporary exponent. However, if to any one 
the mantle of the prophet was handed down, it was to Stevenson. 
In spirit they were alike, — in enthusiasm, in the joy of writing 
and the joy of living, — and Stevenson was ever ready to ac- 
knowledge his allegiance to the master sentimentalist. Among 
recent critics Hazlitt has found a goodly band of admirers — 
Thackeray, Leslie Stephen, Stevenson, Walter Bagehot, Profes- 
sor Saintsbury, Mr. Birrell, and Professor Winchester. 

VII. THE MAN HAZLITT 

Hazlitt's writings were a distinct reflection of his opinions, 
prejudices, and memories. He liked to think and write about 
^' abstract propositions " which, as he once said, " were the last 
thing he would give up." As a boy at Hackney he tried to 
define his conception of ethics and politics. He wrote of time, 



INTRODUCTION Ixi 

birth, immortality, but he could not give them that element of 
mystery which made the work of De Quincey of such rhetorical 
elegance. He did not possess Carlyle's power of giving to them 
the spiritual import which he derived from a greater insight in- 
to the forces of history and life. To Hazlitt everything became 
personal and reminiscent. He brought everything down to that ; 
time was mysterious because the past had so many delightful 
memories ; death was not to be feared because he knew nothing 
of what we were before we were born, therefore what should he 
fear of the future. Every phase of ethics and politics in Hazlitt's 
mind was personified by some one whom he admired or hated. 
To his contemporaries Hazlitt was a man of bad temper. 
Even Lamb, in his note of congratulation ^ on the birth of the 
young William Hazlitt, hoped that the new child would have a 
better temper than his father. He had pleasure in hating, and 
with gusto wrote an essay on the subject. He hated all kinds 
of cant and hypocrisy,^ not because he was driven by a moral 
conviction like Carlyle, but rather because he was led by feelings 
which gave him pleasure. His attitude toward a writer or poli- 
tician was not modified by the fact that the man was living and 
much admired. Above everything he loved freedom and truth, 
and stood up for them. " Mental courage is the only courage I 
pretend to. . . . In little else I have the spirit of martyrdom, 
but I would rather give up anything rather than an abstract 
proposition." " If any one wishes to see me quite calm, they 
may cheat me in a bargain or tread upon my toes, but a truth 
repelled or a sophism repeated totally disconcerts me, and I lose 
all patience. I am not, in the ordinary acceptance of the term, 
a good-natured man ; that is, many things annoy me besides 
what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie ; a 
piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but 

1 See above, p. xxv. 

2 " On Cant and Hypocrisy," " On Depth and Superficiality," " Ignorance 
of the Learned," etc. 



Ixii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

the report of it reaches me. Therefore I have made many ene- 
mies and few friends." ^ And it must be admitted that he never 
concealed anything. The virulent Gifford or the sneering Black- 
wood reviewer were possessed of all the facts, and nothing has 
been revealed since that time to make him the less esteemed. 
In the drama, in painting, in literature, he defended rising men, 
or those for whom he had a sincere regard, and it is surprising 
that most of his judgments are to-day part and parcel of our 
accepted criticism. Born of dissenting parents, he carried on 
the torch of liberalism in thinking. He allied himself with no 
church, occupied himself little with religious questions, hated 
the Whigs ^ because they had not the courage of their convic- 
tions, and the Tories because they^ were the foes of popular 
liberty. He hated all royalty,^ and had little faith in the people.* 
" The public have neither shame nor gratitude." '" By tempera- 
ment he was shy and awkward, and felt great embarrassment 
in the presence of women.^ He always felt that people were 
staring at him or saying disagreeable things about him. To one 
of Northcote's remarks he says : " What you have stated is the 
best excuse I could make for my own faults or blunders. When 
one is found fault with for nothing, or for doing one's best, one 
is apt to give the world their revenge. All the former part of 
my life I was treated as a cipher, and since I have got into 
notice I have been set upon as a wild beast. When this is the 
case, and you can expect as little justice as candor, you natu- 
rally in self-defense take refuge in a sort of misanthropy and 
cynical contempt for mankind. One is disposed to humour them 

1 "On Depth and Superficiality," Works, VII, 347. 

2 " Political Essays," Works, III, preface, pp. 31 f. 

3 " On Great and Little Things," Works, VI, 276. 

4 " On Living to One's-Self." " Hazlitt, who boldly says all he feels, avows 
that not only he does not pity sick people but he hates them." See Lamb's letter 
to B. Barton, April, 1824. 

o " Characteristics," II, No. LXXXV, p. 369. 

6 Lamb's letter to Wordsworth, June 6, 1806 ; references in Crabb Robin- 
son's Diary. 



INTRODUCTION Ixiii 

and to furnish them with some ground for their idle and malev- 
olent censures." ^ 

There is nothing very admirable in Hazlitt's relation to his 
friends. Ill humor may be made the excuse of many of his 
acts, but it is difficult for us to excuse his harsh treatment of 
Coleridge, Wordsworth, and even Lamb, who fortunately under- 
stood him better and, thanks to the nobility of his character and 
his capacity for friendship, appreciated the sterling worth of the 
man and never forsook him.^ Hazlitt, after a congenial acquaint- 
ance had been made, imagined an offense or looked upon his 
friend as the exponent of some narrow prejudice, and then drew 
apart. With something of brutal frankness he once wrote : " I 
have quarreled with almost all my old friends. Most of the 
friends I have seen have turned out the bitterest enemies, or 
cold, uncomfortable acquaintances. Old companions are like 
meats served up too often, that lose their relish and wholesome- 
ness."^ With almost all the men worth knowing in London 
during the years 1805-18 lo HazUtt had been on terms of in- 
timacy, but no one except Charles Lamb remained to him in 
his later years. 

Yet despite all this prejudice and passionate ill humor, the 
man had his fine side. What he liked he liked with joyful enthu- 
siasm. The most delightful passages in his books are those in 
which he records the first time that he read a book or saw a pic- 
ture or a great actor. He thrilled with joy in recalling his first 
reading of Rousseau's " New Heloise," of " Paul and Virginia " 
at an inn in Bridgewater or in Tewksbury, " Tom Jones," Burke's 
" Letter to a Noble Lord," " Gil Bias," "Don Quixote," and a 
dozen more of his favorites. He never forgot his first nights at 
the theater, when he was enraptured by Kean, Kemble, or Mrs. 
Siddons. These red-letter days made him happy. On the day 

1 " Northcote's Conversations," Works, VI, 270. 

2 " Spirit of Obligations," Works, VII, 78 ff. 

3 " On Living to One's-Self," p. 134. 



Ixiv SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

which brought news of the battle of Austerlitz, he wrote, " I 
walked out in the afternoon, and as I returned saw the evening 
star set over a poor man's cottage with other thoughts and feel- 
ings than I shall ever have again.'"' ^ On another day : " I remem- 
ber being once drawn by a shower of rain for shelter into a 
picture dealer's shop in Oxford Street, where there stood on the 
floor a copy of Gainsborough's Shepherd Boy with a thunder- 
storm coming on. What a truth and beauty was there 1 He 
stands with his hands clasped, looking up with a mixture of 
timidity and resignation, eying a magpie chattering over his head, 
while the wind is rustling in the branches. It was like a vision 
breathed on the canvas. I have been fond of Gainsborough ever 
since." ^ The description of his first meeting with Coleridge and 
Wordsworth, Professor Winchester has called " the most delight- 
ful essay of personal reminiscence in the English language." 
Like Lamb he loved the past.^ Like him, too, he loved old books 
and old scenes. " For myself I should like to browse on folios 
and have to do chiefly with authors that I have scarcely strength 
to lift, that are as solid as they are heavy, and if dull are full of 
matter."* He liked to write for the sake of writing, he liked 
painting, he liked good talk ; among the actors, poets, and 
painters he liked the best. His enjoyment of walking has found 
well-nigh perfect expression in one of his most delightful essays. 
These are his pleasures, and where could there be better ? 
" There are only three pleasures in life," he writes, " pure and 
lasting and all derived from inanimate things — books, pictures, 
and the face of nature." ^ " Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; 
these are all I at present ask — the ultima Thule of my wander- 
ing desires." 

1 " On the Pleasure of Painting," p. 92. 

2 " Conversations of Northcote," Works, Vol. VI. 

3 One of his best essays bears the title " On the Past and Future," Works, 
VI, 21 ; see also the " New School of Reform," Works, VII, 179 ff. 

4 " Memoirs," II, 297. See also " On Reading Old Books " and " On Reading 
New Books." 5 " Picture Galleries in England," Works, Vol. IX. 



INTRODUCTION Ixv 

He insisted that a man should be himself and not try to be 
somebody else. " Nothing remarkable was ever done except by 
following up the impulse of our own minds, by grappling with 
difficulties and improving our advantages, not by dreaming over 
our own premature triumphs or doating on the achievements 
of others."-^ "No one has a right to steal who is not rich 
enough to be robbed by others." '^ In his brilliant essay, "On 
Ignorance of the Learned," he held up to scorn the stupid 
ignorance of those who pretend to knowledge got chiefly from 
books. ^ " I never felt myself superior to any one who did not 
go out of his way to affect qualities which he had not." * "I 
myself have no such feeling nor the least ambition to shine 
except by doing something better than others." 

As we close the review of Hazlitt, the man and writer, we 
should heed one of his remarks, " A man's life is his whole life, 
not the last glimmering snuff of the candle, and this, I say, is 
considerable and not a little matter, whether we regard its pleas- 
ures or its pains." He was a man of varied attainments and 
he did his work well. If he has not left a monumental piece, 
he adorned whatever he touched, and cleared a path for other 
great writers who could follow him in work practically untried 
before him. He is always interesting and will long be read by 
those who like work well done and with spirit. His work was 
finished and he might well say with his last breath, looking over 
the joyful moments of his half century, " Well, I 've had a 
happy life." 

1 " English Students at Rome," Works, IX, 371. 

2 "On Originality," Works, IX, 423. 

3 Cf. Stevenson's essay, "Apology for Idlers." 

4 " Characteristics after the Manner of La Rochefoucauld " Works, Vol. II. 



Ixvi SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

VIII. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A. WORKS 

Essay on the Principles of Human Action . . . with Remarks on the 
System of Hartley and Helvetius. 1805. 

Free Thoughts on Public Affairs. 1806. 

Abridgment of Abraham Tucker's " Light of Nature." 1807. 

Eloquence of the British Senate (Parliamentary Speeches and Notes). 
1807. 

Reply to Malthus. 1807. 

A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue, etc. 1810. 

Memoir of Thomas Holcroft, written by himself, etc., continued by 
Hazlitt. 18 1 6. 

The Round Table (from the Kxamiuer). 1817. 

Characters of Shakespear's Plays. 1817, 1818. 

A Review of the English Stage ; or, a Series of Dramatic Criticisms. 
1818, 1821. 

Lectures on the English Poets. 1818, 1819. 

Lectures on the English Comic Writers. 18 19. 

Letter to William Gifford. 18 19. 

Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters. 1819, 1822. 

Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 
1820. 

Table Talk; or. Original Essays on Men and Manners. 1821-1822, 
1824. 

Liber Amoris ; or. The New Pygmalion. 1823. 

Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England, with a Criti- 
cism on " Marriage a la Mode" (in part from London Magazine). 1824. 

Characteristics, in the Manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims. 1823, 

1837- 

The Spirit of the Age ; or. Contemporary Portraits. 1825. 

The Plain Speaker; or. Opinions on Books, Men, and Things. 1826. 

Notes of a Journey through France and Italy (from Morning Chron- 
icle). 1826. 

Boswell Redivivus. 1827. 

The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Vols. I and II. 1828. Vols. Ill 
and IV. 1830. 

Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R. A. 1830. 



INTRODUCTION Ixvii 



Posthumous Publications 

Criticisms on Art, etc. 1843, 1844. 
Literary Remains, etc. 1836. 

Winterslow : Essays and Characters, written there. 1850. 
Sitetches and Essays, now first collected. 1839. Republished as 
" Men and Manners." 1852. 

B. EDITIONS 

The only complete and perfectly satisfactory edition is by Waller and 
Glover in 12 volumes and i volume containing index. 1902-1906. 

Several volumes have been published in the Bohn Library, the World 
Classics (5 vols.), and recently in the Everyman Library (4 vols.) and 
the Temple Classics. 

Small volumes of selections have been edited by E. Carr (Camelot 
Classics) (1889); R. B. Johnson (1894); J. P. Briscoe (1901); H. Paul 
(Cassell Library) (1905) ; C. Whibley (1906) ; Quiller-Couch (1908). 

Conversations of James Northcote, edited with introductory essay on 
Hazlitt as art critic by Edmund Gosse. 1894. 

Dramatic Essays, with introduction and notes (edited by W. Archer 
and R. W. Lowe. 1895). 

C. BIOGRAPHY 

Literary Remains of the Late William Hazlitt, with a Notice of his 
Life by his Son, and Thoughts on his Genius and Writings by E. L. 
Bulwer, Esq., M.P., and Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. 2 vols. 1836. 

Memoirs of William Hazlitt. William Carew Hazlitt. 2 vols. 1867. 

List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, chronolog- 
ically arranged and with notes, by Alexander Ireland. 1868. 

William Hazlitt, Essayist and Critic. With Memoir by Alexander 
Ireland. 1889. This volume contains selections. 

A privately printed edition of " Liber Amoris," containing Mrs. Hazlitt's 
Journal of My Trip to Scotland, edited by Richard Le Gallienne. 1893. 

Four Generations of a Literary Family, the Hazlitts in England, 
Ireland, and America, their Friends and their Fortunes. 1725-1896. 
William Carew Hazlitt. 2 vols. 1897. 

Lamb and Hazlitt, Letters and Records. William Carew Hazlitt. 
1899. 

William Hazlitt. Augustine Birrell, English Men of Letters Series. 
1902. 



Ixviii SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Vie de William Hazlitt, L'Essayiste. Jules Douady. Paris, 1907. 

Liste chronologique des CEuvres de William Hazlitt. Jules Uouady. 
Paris, 1906. 

The Manuscript of the Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson in the Dr. 
Williams Library, London. 

D. THE MORE IMPORTANT CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 
IN MAGAZINES 

Edinburgh Revieto, August, 1817, p. 472; November, 1820, p. 438. 

Motithly Review, Vol. XCII, p. 53; Vol. XCIII, p. 59; ibid., p. 250; 
Vol. CI, p. 55 ; Vol. CVII, p. I ; Vol. CX, p. 1 13 ; Vol. CXXIH, p. 275. 

Blackwood, February, 1818, p. 556; March, 1818, p. 679; April, 1818, 
p. 71; June, 1818, p. 303; August, 1818, p. 553; July, 1822; August, 
1822, p. 157; July, 1824; March, 1825. 

Qitane7-ly Revieto, Vol. XVII, p. 154 ; Vol. XVIII, p. 458 ; Vol. XXII, 
p. 158 ; Vol. XXVI, p. 103 ; Vol. XXIX, p. 424. 

Lottdon Magazine, February, 1820, p. 185; April, 1821, p. 431 ; May, 
1821, p. 545; June, 1823, p. 689; June, 1825, p. 182. 

E. MISCELLANEOUS CRITICISM. 

Dana, R. H. Poems and Prose Writings. Philadelphia, 1883. 

De Quincey, Thomas. Works, V and VI (edited by Masson). 

Dictionary of National Biography (article by Leslie Stephen). 

Elton, Oliver. A Survey of English Literature (1780-1830). 191 2. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XIII. 

Gilchrist, Mrs. Anna. Mary Lamb. 1883. 

GiLFiLLAN, George. Gallery of Literary Portraits (Everyman 
Edition). 

Haydon, B. R. Correspondence and Table Talk. 2 vols. 1876. 

Herford, C. H. The Age of Wordsworth. 1899. 

Hunt, Leigh. Autobiography. 3 vols. 1850. 

Hunt, Leigh. The Dramatic Essays of (edited by Archer and Lowe). 

Keats, John. Letters (edited by H. Buxton Forman), London. 1895. 

Lang, Andrew^. Life of John Gibson Lockhart. 2 vols. 1897. 

Lucas, E. V. The Life of Charles Lamb. Fifth edition. 1910. 

Martineau, Harriet. History of England during the Thirty Years' 
Peace. 

MiTFORD, Mary Russell. Life and Letters (edited by A. G. 
L'Estrange). 3 vols. 1870. 



INTRODUCTION Ixix 

Moore, Paul Elmer. The Shelburne Essays. Second series. 1905. 

Patmore, p. G. My Friends and Acquaintances. 

Procter, Bryan Waller (Barry Cornwall). An Autobiographical 
Fragment and Biographical Notes (edited by Coventry Patmore). 
Boston, 1877. 

Saintsbury, George E. Essays on English Literature (17S0-1860). 
1891. 

Saintsbury, George E. History of Criticism. 3 vols. 1900-1904. 

Stephen, Leslie. Hours in a Library. Vol. II. 1S74-1879. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Letters (edited by Sidney Colvin). 
1911. 

Stoddard, R. H. Personal Recollections of Lamb, Hazlitt, and 
Others. 

Whipple, E. P. Essays and Reviews. 2 vols. 1856. 

Williams, Orlo. Life and Letters of John Rickman. 1912. 

Winchester, C. T. A Group of English Essayists. New York, 
1910. 

Wordsworth. Letters (edited by William Knight). 1907. 



SELECTIONS EROM HAZLITT 



HAMLET 

This is that Hamlet the Dane, whom we read of in our youth, 
and whom we may be said almost to remember in our after- 
years ; he who made that famous soliloquy on life, who gave 
the advice to the players, who thought " this goodly frame, the 
earth, a steril promontory, and this brave o'er-hanging firma- 5 
ment, the air, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, a 
foul and pestilent congregation of vapours ; " whom " man 
delighted not, nor woman neither ; " he who talked with the 
grave-diggers, and moralised on Yorick's skull ; the school-fellow 
of Rosencrans and Guildenstern at Wittenberg ; the friend of 10 
Horatio ; the lover of Ophelia ; he that was mad and sent to 
England ; the slow avenger of his father's death ; who lived at 
the court of Horwendillus five hundred years before we were 
born, but all whose thoughts we seem to know as well as we 
do our own, because we have read them in Shakespear. 15 

Hamlet is a name ; his speeches and sayings but the idle 
coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are they not real ? 
They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the 
reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. This play has a pro- 
phetic truth, which is above that of history. Whoever has be- 20 
come thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps or 
those of others ; whoever has borne about with him the clouded 
brow of reflection, and thought himself " too much i' th' sun ; " 
whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious 
mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before 25 

I 



2 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it ; who- 
ever has known " the pangs of despised love, the insolence of 
office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes;" 
he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to 
5 his heart like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and his 
youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things ; who can- 
not be well at ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a 
spectre ; whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought, 
he to whom the universe seems infinite, and himself nothing ; 

lo whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences, 
and who goes to a play as his best resource to shove off, to a 
second remove, the evils of life by a mock representation of 
them — • this is the true Hamlet. 

We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know 

IS how to criticise it any more than we should know how to de- 
scribe our own faces. But we must make such observations as 
we can. It is the one of Shakespear's plays that we think of 
the oftenest, because it abounds most in striking reflections on 
human life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, 

20 by the turn of his mind, to the general account of humanity. 
Whatever happens to him we apply to ourselves, because he 
applies it so himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a 
great moraliser ; and what makes him worth attending to is, 
that he moralises on his own feelings and experience. He is 

25 not a common-place pedant. If Lear shews the greatest depth 
of passion, Hamlet is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, 
originality, and unstudied development of character. Shakespear 
had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shewn 
more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt 

30 to force an interest : everything is left for time and circumstances 
to unfold. The attention is excited without effort, the incidents 
succeed each other as matters of course, the characters think 
and speak and act just as they might do, if left entirely to them- 
selves. There is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The 



HAMLET 3 

observations are suggested by the passing scene — the gusts of 
passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. 
The whole play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed 
to have taken place at the court of Denmark, at the remote pe- 
riod of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements in morals 5 
and manners were heard of. It would have been interesting 
enough to have been admitted as a by-stander in such a scene, 
at such a time, to have heard and seen something of what was 
going on. But here we are more than spectators. We have not 
only " the outward pageants and the signs of grief ; '' but " we 10 
have that within which passes shew." We read the thoughts 
of the heart, we catch the passions living as they rise. Other 
dramatic writers give us very fine versions and paraphrases of 
nature : but Shakespear, together with his own comments, gives 
us the original text, that we may judge for ourselves. This is a 15 
very great advantage. 

The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effusion of genius. 
It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of pas- 
sion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is 
as little of the hero as a man can well be : but he is a young 20 
and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility 
— the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune and re- 
fining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of 
his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He seems 
incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extrem- 25 
ities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, 
as in the scene where he kills Polonius, and again, where he 
alters the letters which Rosencrans and Guildenstern are taking 
with them to England, purporting his death. At other times, 
when he is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, 30 
and sceptical, dallies with his purposes, till the occasion is lost, 
and always finds some pretence to relapse into indolence and 
thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the 
King when he is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice, 



4 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

which is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, 
defers his revenge to some more fatal opportunity, when he 
shall be engaged in some act " that has no relish of salvation in it." 

" He kneels and prays, 
5 And now I '11 do 't, and so he goes to heaven. 

And so am I reveng'd : that 7iwuld he scanned. 
He kill'd my father, and for that, 
I, his sole son, send him to heaven. 
Why this is reward, not revenge. 
ID Up sword and know thou a more horrid time, 

When he is drunk, asleep, or in a rage." 

He is the prince of philosophical speculators, and because he 
cannot have his revenge perfect, according to the most refined 
idea his wish can form, he misses it altogether. So he scruples 

1 5 to trust the suggestions of the Ghost, contrives the scene of the 
play to have surer proof of his uncle's guilt, and then rests sat- 
isfied with this confirmation of his suspicions, and the success 
of his experiment, instead of acting upon it. Yet he is sensible 
of his own weakness, taxes himself with it, and tries to reason 

2o himself out of it. 

" How all occasions do inform against me. 

And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man. 

If his chief good and market of his time 

Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast ; no more. 
25 Sure he that made us with such large discourse, 

Looking before and after, gave us not 

That capability and god-like reason 

To rust in us unus'd : now whether it be 

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
30 Of thinking too precisely on th' event, • — 

A thought which quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom. 

And ever three parts coward ; — I do not know 

Why yet I live to say, this thing 's to do ; 

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means 
35 To do it. Examples gross as earth excite me : 

Witness this army of such mass and charge. 

Led by a delicate and tender prince, 

Whose spirit with divine ambition puff' d. 



HAMLET 5 

Makes mouths at the invisible event, 

Exposing what is mortal and unsure 

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, 

Even for an egg-shell. 'T is not to be great, 

Never to stir without great argument ; 5 

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw. 

When honour 's at the stake. How stand I then. 

That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, 

Excitements of my reason and my blood, 

And let all sleep, while to my shame I see lo 

The imminent death of twenty thousand men, 

That for a fantasy and trick of fame. 

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot 

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, 

Which is not tomb enough and continent 15 

To hide the slain ? — O, from this time forth. 

My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth." 

Still he does nothing ; and this very speculation on his own in- 
firmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is 
not for any want of attachment to his father or abhorrence of 20 
his murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it is more to his 
taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity 
of the crime and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to 
put them into immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, 
not to act: and any vague pretence that flatters this propensity 25 
instantly diverts him from his previous purposes. 

The moral perfection of this character has been called in ques- 
tion, we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more 
interesting than according to rules : amiable, though not faultless. 
The ethical delineations of " that noble and liberal casuist " (as 30 
Shakespear has been well called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured 
quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from the 
Whole Duty of Man or from The Academy of Compliments ! 
We confess, we are a little shocked at the want of refinement '' 
in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. 35 
The want of punctilious exactness, in his behaviour either par- 
takes of the " licence of the time," or else belongs to the very 



6 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes 
the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose 
upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal 
of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the airy 
5 world of contemplation to lay as much stress as he ought on 
the practical consequences of things. His habitual principles 
of action are unhinged and out of joint with the time. His con- 
duct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that 
of assumed severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, 

10 of bitter regrets, of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the 
distractions of the scene around him ! Amidst the natural and 
preternatural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in 
delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. When "his father's 
spirit was in arms," it was not a time for the son to make love in. 

15 He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by ex- 
plaining the cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust 
himself to think of. It would have taken him years to have come 
to a direct explanation on the point. In the harassed state of his 
mind, he could not have done otherwise than he did. His con- 

20 duct does not contradict what he says when he sees her funeral, 

" I loved Ophelia : forty thousand brothers 
Could not with all their quantity of love 
Make up my sum." 

Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than the Queen's 
25 apostrophe to Ophelia on throwing the flowers into the grave. 

" Sweets to the sweet, farewell. 
I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife : 
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, 
And not have strew'd thy grave." 

30 Shakespear was thoroughly a master of the mixed motives of 
human character, and he here shews us the Queen, who was so 
criminal in some respects, not without sensibility and affection 
in other relations of life. — Ophelia is a character almost too 
exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon. Oh rose of May, oh 



HAMLET ^ 7 

flower too soon faded ! Her love, her madness, her death, are 
described with the truest touches of tenderness and pathos. It 
is a character which nobody but Shakespear could have drawn 
in the way that he has done, and to the conception of which 
there is not even the smallest approach, except in some of the 5 
old romantic ballads.^ Her brother, Laertes, is a character we 
do not like so well : he is too hot and choleric, and somewhat 
rhodomontade. Polonius is a perfect character in its kind ; nor 
is there any foundation for the objections which have been 
made to the consistency of this part. It is said that he acts 10 
very foolishly and talks very sensibly. There is no inconsistency 
in that. Again, that he talks wisely at one time and foolishly at 
another ; that his advice to Laertes is very sensible, and his 
advice to the King and Queen on the subject of Hamlet's 
madness very ridiculous. But he gives the one as a father, 15 
and is sincere in it ; he gives the other as a mere courtier, a 
busy-body, and is accordingly officious, garrulous, and imper- 
tinent. In short, Shakespear has been accused of inconsistency 
in this and other characters, only because he has kept up the 
distinction which there is in nature, between the understand- 20 
ings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of 
their ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not a 
fool, but he makes himself so. .His folly, whether in his actions 
or speeches, comeS under the head of impropriety of intention. 

We do not like to see our author's plays acted, and least of 25 
all, Hamlet. There is no play that suffers so much in being 
transferred to the stage. Hamlet himself seems hardly capable 
of being acted. Mr. Kemble unavoidably fails in this character 
from a want of ease and variety. The character of Hamlet is 

1 In the account of her death, a friend has pointed out an instance of the 
poet's exact observation of nature : — 

" There is a willow growing o'er a brook, 
That shows its hoary leaves i' th' glassy stream." 

The inside of the leaves of the willow, next the water, is of a whitish colour, and 
the reflection would therefore be " hoary." 



8 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

made up of undulating lines ; it has the yielding flexibility of 
" a wave o' th' sea." Mr. Kemble plays it like a man in armour, 
with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating 
straight line, which is as remote from the natural grace and 
5 refined susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles 
and abrupt starts which Mr. Kean introduces into the part. 
Mr. Kean's Hamlet is as much too splenetic and rash as Mr. 
Kemble's is too deliberate and formal. His manner is too strong 
and pointed. He throws a severity, approaching to virulence, 

lo into the common observations and answers. There is nothing of 
this in Hamlet. He is, as it were, wrapped up in his reflections, 
and only thinks aloud. There should therefore be no attempt to 
impress what he says upon others by a studied exaggeration of 
emphasis or manner ; no talking at his hearers. There should 

15 be as much of the gentleman and scholar as possible infused 
into the part, and as little of the actor. A pensive air of sadness 
should sit reluctantly upon his brow, but no appearance of fixed 
and sullen gloom. He is full of weakness and melancholy, but 
there is no harshness in his nature. He is the most amiable of 

20 misanthropes. 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 

" The proper study of mankind is man." 

I now come to speak of that sort of writing which has been 
so successfully cultivated in this country by our periodical 
Essayists, and which consists in applying the talents and re- 
sources of the mind to all that mixed mass of human affairs, 
which, though not included under the head of any regular art, 5 
science, or profession, falls under the cognizance of the writer, 
and " comes home to the business and bosoms of men." Qiiic- 
quid agunt homines nostri farrago libelli, is the general motto of 
this department of literature. It does not treat of minerals or 
fossils, of the virtues of plants, or the influence of planets; it 10 
does not meddle with forms of belief, or systems of philosophy, 
nor launch into the world of spiritual existences ; but it makes 
familiar with the world of men and women, records their actions, 
assigns their motives, exhibits their whims, characterises their 
pursuits in all their singular and endless variety, ridicules their 15 
absurdities, exposes their inconsistencies, " holds the mirror up 
to nature, and shews the very age and body of the time its 
form and pressure ; " takes minutes of our dress, air, looks, 
words, thoughts, and actions ; shews us what we are, and what 
we are not ; plays the whole game of human life over before 20 
us, and by making us enlightened spectators of its many-coloured 
scenes, enables us (if possible) to become tolerably reasonable 
agents in the one in which we have to perform a part. " The 
act and practic part of life is thus made the mistress of our 
theorique." It is the best and most natural course of study. It 25 
is in morals and manners what the experimental is in natural 
philosophy, as opposed to the dogmatical method. It does not 

9 



lO SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

deal in sweeping clauses of proscription and anathema, but in 
nice distinction and liberal constructions. It makes up its general 
accounts from details, its few theories from many facts. It does 
not try to prove all black or all white as it wishes, but lays on 
5 the intermediate colours, (and most of them not unpleasing 
ones,) as it finds them blended with " the web of our life, which 
is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together." It inquires what 
human life is and has been, to shew what it ought to be. It 
follows it into courts and camps, into town and country, into 

10 rustic sports or learned disputations, into the various shades of 
prejudice or ignorance, of refinement or barbarism, into its pri- 
vate haunts or public pageants, into its weaknesses and little- 
nesses, its professions and its practices — before it pretends to 
distinguish right from wrong, or one thing from another. How, 

I s indeed, should it do so otherwise ? 

" Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, 
Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit." 

The writers I speak of are, if not moral philosophers, moral his- 
torians, and that 's better : or if they are both, they found the one 

20 character upon the other ; their premises precede their conclu- 
sions ; and we put faith in their testimony, for we know that it is true. 
Montaigne was the first person who in his Essays led the way 
to this kind of writing among the moderns. The great merit of 
Montaigne then was, that he may be said to have been the first 

25 who had the courage to say as an author what he felt as a man. 
And as courage is generally the effect of conscious strength, he 
was probably led to do so by the richness, truth, and force of 
his own observations on books and men. He was, in the truest 
sense, a man of original mind, that is, he had the power of 

30 looking at things for himself, or as they really were, instead of 
blindly trusting to, and fondly repeating what others told him 
that they were. He got rid of the go-cart of prejudice and 
affectation, with the learned lumber that follows at their heels, 
because he could do without them. In taking up his pen he did 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 1 1 

not set up for a philosopher, wit, orator, or moralist, but he 
became all these by merely daring to tell us whatever passed 
through his mind, in its naked simplicity and force, that he 
thought any ways worth communicating. He did not, in the 
abstract character of an author, undertake to say all that could 5 
be said upon a subject, but what in his capacity as an inquirer 
after truth he happened to know about it. He was neither a 
pedant nor a bigot. He neither supposed that he was bound to 
know all things, nor that all things were bound to conform to 
what he had fancied or would have them to be. In treating of 10 
men and manners, he spoke of them as he found them, not 
according to preconceived notions and abstract dogmas ; and 
he began by teaching us what he himself was. In criticising 
books he did not compare them with rules and systems, but told 
us what he saw to like or dislike in them. He did not take his 15 
standard of excellence " according to an exact scale" of Aristotle, 
or fall out with a work that was good for anything, because 
" not one of the angles at the four corners was a right one." 
He was, in a word, the first author who was not a bookmaker, 
and who wrote not to make converts of others to established 20 
creeds and prejudices, but to satisfy his own mind of the truth 
of things. In this respect we know not which to be most 
charmed with, the author or the man. There is an inexpressible 
frankness and sincerity, as well as power, in what he writes. 
There is no attempt at imposition or concealment, no juggling 25 
tricks or solemn mouthing, no laboured attempts at proving 
himself always in the right, and everybody else in the wrong ; 
he says what is uppermost, lays open what floats at the top or 
the bottom of his mind, and deserves Pope's character of him, 
where he professes to 30 

" pour out all as plain 

As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne." ^ 

1 Why Pope should say in reference to him, " Or more wise Charron," is not 
easy to determine. 



12 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

He does not converse with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, 
whom he wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but 
like a philosopher and friend who has passed through life with 
thought and observation, and is willing to enable others to pass 
5 through it with pleasure and profit. A writer of this stamp, I 
confess, appears to me as much superior to a common book- 
worm, as a library of real books is superior to a mere book- 
case, painted and lettered on the outside with the names of 
celebrated works. As he was the first to attempt this new way 

lo of writing, so the same strong natural impulse which prompted 
the undertaking, carried him to the end of his career. The same 
force and honesty of mind which urged him to throw off the 
shackles of custom and prejudice, would enable him to complete 
his triumph over them. He has left little for his successors to 

15 achieve in the way of just and original speculation on human 
life. Nearly all the thinking of the two last centuries of that 
kind which the French denominate morale observatrice, is to be 
found in Montaigne's Essays : there is the germ, at least, and 
generally much more. He sowed the seed and cleared away the 

20 rubbish, even where others have reaped the fruit, or cultivated 
and decorated the soil to a greater degree of nicety and perfec- 
tion. There is no one to whom the old Latin adage is more 
applicable than to Montaigne, " Pereant isti qui ante nos nostra 
dixerunty There has been no new impulse given to thought 

25 since his time. Among the specimens of criticisms on authors 
which he has left us, are those on Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio, 
in the account of books which he thinks worth reading, or (which 
is the same thing) which he finds he can read in his old age, and 
which may be reckoned among the few criticisms which are 

30 worth reading at any age.^ 

1 As an instance of his general power of reasoning, I shall give his chapter 
entitled One Ma)is Profit is another's Loss, in which he has nearly anticipated 
Mandeville's celebrated paradox of private vices being public benefits : — 

Demades, the Athenian, condemned a fellow-citizen, who furnished out funerals, 
for demanding too great a price for his goods : and if he got an estate, it must be by the 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 1 3 

Montaigne's Essays were translated into English by Charles 
Cotton, who was one of the wits and poets of the age of Charles 
11. ; and Lord Halifax, one of the noble critics of that day, de- 
clared it to be " the book in the world he was the best pleased 
with." This mode of familiar Essay-writing, free from the tram- 5 
mels of the schools, and the airs of professed authorship, was 
successfully imitated, about the same time, by Cowley and Sir 
William Temple, in their miscellaneous Essays, which are very 
agreeable and learned talking upon paper. Lord Shaftesbury, 
on the contrary, who aimed at the same easy, degage mode of 10 
communicating his thoughts to the world, has quite spoiled his 
matter, which is sometimes valuable, by his manner, in which 
he carries a certain flaunting, flowery, figurative, flirting style 
of amicable condescension to the reader, to an excess more tan- 
talising than the most starched and ridiculous formality of the 15 
age of James L There is nothing so tormenting as the affecta- 
tion of ease and freedom from affectation. 

The ice being thus thawed, and the barrier that kept authors 
at a distance from common sense and feeling broken through, 
the transition was not difficult from Montaigne and his imitators 20 
to our Periodical Essayists. These last applied the same unre- 
strained expression of their thoughts to the more immediate and 

death of a great many people : but I think it a sentence ill grounded, forasmuch as no 
profit can be made, but at the expense of some other person, and that every kind of gain 
is by that rule liable to be condemned. The tradesman thrives by the debauchery of 
youth, and the farmer by the deamess of corn ; the architect by the ruin of buildings, 
the officers of justice by quarrels and law-suits ; nay, even the honour and function of 
divines is owing to our mortality and vices. No physician takes pleasure in the health 
even of his best friends, said the ancient Greek comedian, nor soldier in the peace of his 
country ; and so of the rest. And, what is yet worse, let every one but examine his own 
heart, and he will find, that his private wishes spring and grow up at the expense of some 
other person. Upon which consideration this thought came into my head, that nature 
does not hereby deviate from her general policy ; for the naturalists hold, that the birth, 
nourishment, and increase of any one thing is the decay and corruption of another : 

" Nam giwdciingite stiis nmtatuin fi^iibiis exit, 
Coniimto hoc mors est illins, quod/uit ante. i. e. 

For what from its own confines chang'd doth pass. 
Is straight the death of what before it was." 

Vol. I, Chap. xxi. 



14 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

passing scenes of life, to temporary and local matters ; and in 
order to discharge the invidious office of Censor Mornm more 
freely, and with less responsibility, assumed some fictitious and 
humorous disguise, which, however, in a great degree corre- 
5 sponded to their own peculiar habits and character. By thus con- 
cealing their own name and person under the title of the Tatler, 
Spectator, «&c., they were enabled to inform us more fully of 
what was passing in the world, while the dramatic contrast and 
ironical point of view to which the whole is subjected, added a 

lo greater liveliness ■a.wA piquancy to the descriptions. The philoso- 
pher and wit here commences newsmonger, makes himself 
master of " the perfect spy o' th' time," and from his various 
walks and turns through life, brings home little curious speci- 
mens of the humours, opinions, and manners of his contempo- 

15 raries, as the botanist brings home different plants and weeds, 
or the mineralogist different shells and fossils, to illustrate their 
several theories, and be useful to mankind. 

The first of these papers that was attempted in this country 
was set up by Steele in the beginning of the last century ; and 

20 of all our periodical Essayists, the Tatler (for that was the name 
he assumed) has always appeared to me the most amusing and 
agreeable. Montaigne, whom I have proposed to consider as 
the father of this kind of personal authorship among the moderns, 
in which the reader is admitted behind the curtain, and sits down 

25 with the writer in his gown and slippers, was a most magnani- 
mous and undisguised egotist ; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. was 
the more disinterested gossip of the two. The French author is 
contented to describe the peculiarities of his own mind and con- 
stitution, which he does with a copious and Unsparing hand. 

30 The English journalist good-naturedly lets you into the secret 
both of his own affairs and those of others. A young lady, on 
the other side Temple Bar, cannot be seen at her glass for half 
a day together, but Mr. Bickerstaff takes due notice of it ; and 
he has the first intelligence of the symptoms of the belle passion 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS I 5 

appearing in any young gentleman at the West-end of the town. 
The departures and arrivals of widows with handsome jointures, 
either to bury their grief in the country, or to procure a second 
husband in town, are punctually recorded in his pages. He is 
well acquainted with the celebrated beauties of the preceding age 5 
at the court of Charles II. ; and the old gentleman (as he feigns 
himself) often grows romantic in recounting " the disastrous 
strokes which his youth suffered " from the glances of their bright 
eyes, and their unaccountable caprices. In particular, he dwells 
with a secret satisfaction on the recollection of one of his mis- 10 
tresses, who left him for a richer rival, and whose constant re- 
proach to her husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, 
was " I, that might have married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to 
be treated in this manner ! " The club at the Trumpet consists 
of a set of persons almost as well worth knowing as himself. The 1 5 
cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, the 
countiy squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew, who came 
to wait on him at his chambers, in such form and ceremony, 
seem not to have settled the order of their precedence to this 
hour^; and I should hope that the upholsterer and his companions, 20 
who used to sun themselves in the Green Park, and who broke 
their rest and fortunes to maintain the balance of power in Eu- 
rope, stand as fair a chance for immortality as some modern 
politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff himself is a gentleman and a scholar, 
a humorist, and a man of the world ; with a great deal of nice 25 
easy naivete about him. If he walks out and is caught in a 
shower of rain, he makes amends for this unlucky accident by a 
criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes with a burlesque 
copy of verses on a city-shower. He entertains us, when he 
dates from his own apartments, with a quotation from Plutarch, 30 
or a moral reflection ; • from the Grecian coffee-house with pol- 
itics ; and from Wills' or the Temple, with the poets and players, 
the beaux and men of wit and pleasure about town. In reading 

1 No. I2v 



l6 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

the pages of the Tatler, we seem as if suddenly carried back 
to the age of Queen Anne, of toupees and full-bottomed peri- 
wigs. The whole appearance of our dress and manners under- 
goes a delightful metamorphosis. The beaux and the belles 
5 are of a quite different species from what they are at present ; 
we distinguish the dappers, the smarts, and the pretty fellows, 
as they pass by Mr. Lilly's shop-windows in the Strand ; we 
are introduced to Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield behind the scenes ; 
are made familiar with the persons and performances of Will 

10 Estcourt or Tom Durfey ; we listen to a dispute at a tavern on 
the merits of the Duke of Marlborough or Marshal Turenne ; 
or are present at the first rehearsal of a play by Vanbrugh, or 
the reading of a new poem by Mr. Pope. The privilege of thus 
virtually transporting ourselves to past times is even greater 

15 than that of visiting distant places in reality. London, a hundred 
years ago, would be much better worth seeing than Paris at 
the present moment. 

It will be said, that all this is to be found, in the same or a 
greater degree, |^in the Spectator. For myself, I do not think 

20 so ; or at least, there is in the last work a much greater propor- 
tion of common-place matter. I have, on this account, always 
preferred the Tatler to the Spectator. Whether it is owing to 
my having been earlier or better acquainted with the one than 
the other, my pleasure in reading these two admirable works is 

25 not in proportion to their comparative reputation. The Tatler 
contains only half the number of volumes, and, I will venture to 
say, nearly an equal quantity of sterling wit and sense. " The 
first sprightly runnings " are there : it has more of the original 
spirit, more of the freshness and stamp of nature. The indica- 

30 tions of character and strokes of humour are more true and fre- 
quent ; the reflections that suggest themselves arise more from 
the occasion, and are less spun out into regular dissertations. 
They are more like the remarks which occur in sensible con- 
versation, and less like a lecture. Something is left to the 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 1/ 

understanding of the reader. Steele seems to have gone into 
his closet chiefly to set down what he observed out of doors. 
Addison seems to have spent most of his time in his study, and 
to have spun out and wire-drawn the hints, which he borrowed 
from Steele, or took from nature, to the utmost. I am far from 5 
wishing to depreciate Addison's talents, but I am anxious to do 
justice to Steele, who was, I think, upon the whole, a less arti- 
ficial and more original writer. The humorous descriptions of 
Steele resemble loose sketches, or fragments of a comedy ; those 
of Addison are rather comments or ingenious paraphrases on the 10 
genuine text. The characters of the club not only in the Tatler, 
but in the Spectator, were drawn by Steele. That of Sir Roger 
de Cpverley is among the number. Addison has, however, 
gained himself immortal honour by his manner of filling up this 
last character. Who is there that can forget, or be insensible to, 1 5 
the inimitable nameless graces and varied traits of nature and 
of old English character in it — to his unpretending virtues and 
amiable weaknesses — to his modesty, generosity, hospitality, 
and eccentric whims — to the respect of his neighbours, and 
the affection of his domestics — to his wayward, hopeless, secret 20 
passion for his fair enemy, the widow, in which there is more 
of real romance and true delicacy, than in a thousand tales of 
knight-errantry — (we perceive the hectic flush of his cheek, 
the faltering of his tongue in speaking of her bewitching airs 
and " the whiteness of her hand ") — to the havoc he makes 25 
among the game in his neighbourhood — to his speech from 
the bench, to shew the Spectator what is thought of him in the 
country — to his unwillingness to be put up as a sign-post, and 
his having his own likeness turned into the Saracen's head — 
to his gentle reproof of the baggage of a gipsy that tells him 30 
" he has a widow in his line of life " — to his doubts as to the 
existence of witchcraft, and protection of reputed witches — to 
his account of the family pictures, and his choice of a chaplain — 
to his falling asleep at church, and his reproof of John Williams, 



1 8 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

as soon as he recovered from his nap, for talking in sermon- 
time. The characters of Will. Wimble and Will. Honeycomb 
are not a whit behind their friend, Sir Roger, in delicacy and 
felicity. The delightful simplicity and good-humoured officious- 
5 ness in the one are set off by the graceful affectation and courtly 
pretension in the other. How long since I first became ac- 
quainted with these two characters in the Spectator ! What 
old-fashioned friends they seem, and yet I am not tired of them 
like so many other friends, nor they of me ! How airy these 

10 abstractions of the poet's pen stream over the dawn of our 
acquaintance with human life ! how they glance their fairest 
colours on the prospect before us ! how pure they remain in it 
to the last, like the rainbow in the evening-cloud, which the 
rude hand of time and experience can neither soil nor dissipate ! 

15 What a pity that we cannot find the reality, and yet if we did, 
the dream would be over. I once thought I knew a Will. Wimble, 
and a Will. Honeycomb, but they turned out but indifferently ; 
the originals in the Spectator still read, word for word, the same 
that they always did. We have only to turn to the page, and find 

20 them where we left them ! — Many of the most exquisite pieces 
in the Tatler, it is to be observed, are Addison's, as the Court of 
Honour, and the Personification of Musical Instruments, with 
almost all those papers that form regular sets or series. I do 
not know whether the picture of the family of an old college 

25 acquaintance, in the Tatler, where the children run to let Mr. 
Bickerstaff in at the door, and where the one that loses the race 
that way, turns back to tell the father that he is come ; with the 
nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy, who is got into 
Guy of Warwick, and the Seven Champions, and who shakes his 

30 head at the improbability of y^sop's Fables, is Steele's or Ad- 
dison's, though I believe it belongs to the former. The account 
of the two sisters, one of whom held up her head higher than 
ordinary, from having on a pair of flowered garters, and that of 
the married lady who complained to the Tatler of the neglect of 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 19 

her husband, with her answers to some Jurme questions that were 
put to her, are unquestionably Steele's. — If the Tatler is not 
inferior to the Spectator as a record of manners and character, 
it is superior to it in the interest of many of the stories. Several 
of the incidents related there by Steele have never been sur- 5 
passed in the heart-rending pathos of private distress. I might 
refer to those of the lover and his mistress, when the theatre, in 
which they were, caught fire ; of the bridegroom, who by accident 
kills his bride on the day of their marriage ; the story of Mr. 
Eustace and his wife ; and the fine dream about his own mistress 10 
when a youth. What has given its superior reputation to the 
Spectator, is the greater gravity of its pretensions, its moral dis- 
sertations and critical reasonings, by which I confess myself less 
edified than by other things, which are thought more lightly of. 
Systems and opinions change, but nature is always true. It is 15 
the moral and didactic tone of the Spectator which makes us apt 
to think of Addison (according to Mandeville's sarcasm) as " a 
parson in a tie-wig." Many of his moral Essays are, however, 
exquisitely beautiful and quite happy. Such are the reflections 
on cheerfulness, those in Westminster Abbey, on the Royal 20 
Exchange, and particularly some very affecting ones on the 
death of a young lady in the fourth volume. These, it must be 
allowed, are the perfection of elegant sermonising. His critical 
Essays are not so good. I prefer Steele's occasional selection of 
beautiful poetical passages, without any affectation of analysing 25 
their beauties, to Addison's finer-spun theories. The best criti- 
cism in the Spectator, that on the Cartoons of Raphael, of which 
Mr. Fuseli has availed himself with great spirit in his Lectures, 
is by Steele.^ I owed this acknowledgment to a writer who has 
so often put me in good humour with myself, and everything 30 
about me, when few things else could, and when the tomes of 

1 The antithetical style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was so fond of, in 
which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the substantive, such as " proud 
submission and dignified obedience," are, I think, first to be found in the Tatler, 



20 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

casuistry and ecclesiastical history, with which the little duodec- 
imo volumes of the Tatler were overwhelmed and surrounded, 
in the only library to which I had access when a boy, had tried 
their tranquillising effects upon me in vain. I had not long ago 
5 in my hands, by favour of a friend, an original copy of the 
quarto edition of the Tatler, with a list of the subscribers. It is 
curious to see some names there which we should hardly think 
of (that of Sir Isaac Newton is among them), and also to observe 
the degree of interest excited by those of the different persons, 

lo which is not determined according to the rules of the Herald's 
College. One literary name lasts as long as a whole race of 
heroes and their descendants ! The Guardian, which followed 
the Spectator, was, as may be supposed, inferior to it. 

The dramatic and conversational turn which forms the 

15 distinguishing feature and greatest charm of the Spectator and 
Tatler, is quite lost in the Rambler by Dr. Johnson. There is 
no reflected light thrown on human life from an assumed char- 
acter, nor any direct one from a display of the author's own. 
The Tatler and Spectator are, as it were, made up of notes and 

20 memorandums of the events and incidents of the day, with 
finished studies after nature, and characters fresh from the life, 
which the writer moralises upon, and turns to account as they 
come before him : the Rambler is a collection of moral Essays, 
or scholastic theses, written on set subjects, and of which the 

25 indfvidual characters and incidents are merely artificial illustra- 
tions, brought in to give a pretended relief to the dryness of 
didactic discussion. The Rambler is a splendid and imposing 
common-place-book of general topics, and rhetorical declama- 
tion on the conduct and business of human life. In this sense, 

30 there is hardly a reflection that had been suggested on such sub- 
jects which is not to be found in this celebrated work, and there 
is, perhaps, hardly a reflection to be found in it which had not 
been already suggested and developed by some other author, or 
in the common course of conversation. The mass of intellectual 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 21 

wealth here heaped together is immense, but it is rather the 
result of gradual accumulation, the produce of the general in- 
tellect, labouring in the mine of knowledge and reflection, than 
dug out of the quarry, and dragged into the light by the indus- 
try and sagacity of a single mind. I am not here saying that 5 
Dr. Johnson was a man without originality, compared with the 
ordinary run of men's minds, but he was not a man of original 
thought or genius, in the sense in which Montaigne or Lord 
Bacon was. He opened no new vein of precious ore, nor did 
he light upon any single pebbles of uncommon size and un- 10 
rivalled lustre. We seldom meet with anything to " give us 
pause ; " he does not set us thinking for the first time. His 
reflections present themselves like reminiscences ; do not disturb 
the ordinary march of our thoughts ; arrest our attention by the 
stateliness of their appearance, and the costliness of their garb, 15 
but pass on and mingle with the throng of our impressions. 
After closing the volumes of the Rambler, there is nothing 
that we remember as a new truth gained to the mind, nothing 
indelibly stamped upon the memory ; nor is there any passage 
that we wish to turn to as embodying any known principle or 20 
observation, with such force and beauty that justice can only be 
done to the idea in the author's own words. Such, for instance, 
are many of the passages to be found in Burke, which shine by 
their own light, belong to no class, have neither equal nor coun- 
terpart, and of which we say that no one but the author could 25 
have written them ! There is neither the same boldness of de- 
sign, nor mastery of execution in Johnson. In the one, the 
spark of genius seems to have met with its congenial matter : 
the shaft is sped ; the forked lightning dresses up the face of 
nature in ghastly smiles, and the loud thunder rolls far away 30 
from the ruin that is made. Dr. Johnson's style, on the con- 
trary, resembles rather the rumbling of mimic thunder at one 
of our theatres ; and the light he throws upon a subject is like 
the dazzling effect of phosphorus, or an ignis fatuus of words. 



22 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

There is a wide difference, however, between perfect originality 
and perfect common-place : neither ideas nor expressions are 
trite or vulgar because they are not quite new. They are valu- 
able, and ought to be repeated, if they have not become quite 
5 common ; and Johnson's style both of reasoning and imagery 
holds the middle rank between startling novelty and vapid 
common-place. Johnson has as much originality of thinking 
as Addison ; but then he wants his familiarity of illustration, 
knowledge of character, and delightful humour. — What most 

lo distinguishes Dr. Johnson from other writers is the pomp and 
uniformity of his style. All his periods are cast in the same 
mould, are of the same size and shape, and consequently have 
little fitness to the variety of things he professes to treat of. 
His subjects are familiar, but the author is always upon stilts. 

1 5 He has neither ease nor simplicity, and his efforts at playfulness, 
in part, remind one of the lines in Milton : — 

" The elephant 

To make them sport wreath'd his proboscis lithe." 

His Letters from Correspondents, in particular, are more pom- 
2o pous and unwieldy than what he writes in his own person. This 
want of relaxation and variety of manner has, I think, after the 
first effects of novelty and surprise were over, been prejudicial 
to the matter. It takes from the general power not only to 
, please, but to instruct. The monotony of style produces an 
25 apparent monotony of ideas. What is really striking and valu- 
able, is lost in the vain ostentation and circumlocution of the 
expression ; for when we find the same pains and pomp of dic- 
tion bestowed upon the most trifling as upon the most important 
parts of a sentence or discourse, we grow tired of distinguishing 
30 between pretension and reality, and are disposed to confound 
the tinsel and bombast of the phraseology with want of weight 
in the thoughts. Thus, from the imposing and oracular nature 
of the style, people are tempted at first to imagine that our 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 23 

author's speculations are all wisdom and profundity : till having 
found out their mistake in some instances, they suppose that 
there is nothing but common-place in them, concealed under 
verbiage and pedantry ; and in both they are wrong. The fault 
of Dr. Johnson's style is, that he reduces all things to the same 5 
artificial and unmeaning level. It destroys all shades of differ- 
ence, the association between words and things. It is a perpetual 
paradox and innovation. He condescends to the familiar till we 
are ashamed of our interest in it : he expands the little till it 
looks big. "If he were to write a fable of little fishes," as 10 
Goldsmith said of him, " he would make them speak like great 
whales." We can no more distinguish the most familiar objects 
in his description of them, than we can a well-known face under 
a huge painted mask. The structure of his sentences, which was 
his own invention, and which has been generally imitated since 15 
his time, is a species of rhyming in prose, where one clause 
answers to another in measure and quantity, like the tagging of 
syllables at the end of a verse ; the close of the period follows 
as mechanically as the oscillation of a pendulum, the sense is 
balanced with the sound ; each sentence, revolving round its 20 
centre of gravity, is contained with itself like a couplet, and 
each paragraph forms itself into a stanza. Dr. Johnson is also 
a complete balance-master in the topics of morality. He never 
encourages hope, but he counteracts it by fear ; he never elicits 
a truth, but he suggests some objection in answer to it. He 25 
seizes and alternately quits the clue of reason, lest it should in- 
volve him in the labyrinths of endless error : he wants confidence 
in himself and his fellows. He dares not trust himself with the 
immediate impressions of things, for fear of compromising his 
dignity ; or follow them into their consequences, for fear of 30 
committing his prejudices. His timidity is the result, not of 
ignorance, but of morbid apprehension. " He runs the great 
circle, and is still at home." No advance is made by his writ- 
ings in any sentiment, or mode of reasoning. Out of the pale 



24 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

of established authority and received dogmas, all is sceptical, 
loose, and desultory : he seems in imagination to strengthen the 
dominion of prejudice, as he weakens and dissipates that of rea- 
son ; and round the rock of faith and power, on the edge of 
5 which he slumbers blindfold and uneasy, the waves and billows of 
uncertain and dangerous opinion roar and heave for evermore. 
His Rasselas is the most melancholy and debilitating moral 
speculation that ever was put forth. Doubtful of the faculties 
of his mind, as of his organs of vision, Johnson trusted only to 

lo his feelings and his fears. He cultivated a belief in witches as 
an out-guard to the evidences of religion ; and abused Milton, 
and patronised Lauder, in spite of his aversion to his country- 
men, as a step to secure the existing establishment in church 
and state. This was neither right feeling nor sound logic. 

15 The most triumphant record of the talents and character of 
Johnson is to be found in Boswell's Life of him. The man was 
superior to the author. When he threw aside his pen, which he 
regarded as an incumbrance, he became not only learned and 
thoughtful, but acute, witty, humorous, natural, honest ; hearty 

20 and determined, " the king of good fellows and wale of old 
men." There are as many smart repartees, profound remarks, 
and keen invectives to be found in Boswell's " inventory of all 
he said," as are recorded of any celebrated man. The life and 
dramatic play of his conversation forms a contrast to his written 

25 works. His natural powers and undisguised opinions were called 
out in convivial intercourse. In public, he practised with the foils 
on : in private, he unsheathed the sword of controversy, and it 
was " the Ebro's temper." The eagerness of opposition roused 
him from his natural sluggishness and acquired timidity ; he re- 

30 turned blow for blow ; and whether the trial were of argument 
or wit, none of his rivals could boast much of the encounter. 
Burke seems to have been the only person who had a chance 
with him : and it is the unpardonable sin of Boswell's work, that 
he has purposely omitted their combats of strength and skill. 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 25 

Goldsmith asked, " Does he wind into a subject like a serpent, 
as Burke does ? " And when exhausted with sickness, he himself 
said, " If that fellow Burke^were here now, he would kill me." 
It is to be observed, that Johnson's colloquial style was as blunt, 
direct, and downright, as his style of studied composition was 5 
involved and circuitous. As when Topham Beauclerc and Lang- 
ton knocked him up at his chambers, at three in the morning, 
and he came to the door with the poker in his hand, but seeing 
them, exclaimed, " What, is it you, my lads ? then I '11 have a 
frisk with you ! " And he afterwards reproaches Langton, who 10 
was a literary milksop, for leaving them to go to an engagement 
" with some un-idead girls." What words to come from the 
mouth of the great moralist and lexicographer ! His good deeds 
were as many as his good sayings. His domestic habits, his ten- 
derness to servants, and readiness to oblige his friends ; the i s 
quantity of strong tea that he drank to keep down sad thoughts ; 
his many labours reluctantly begun, and irresolutely laid aside ; 
his honest acknowledgment of his own, and indulgence to the 
weaknesses of others ; his throwing himself back in the post- 
chaise with Boswell, and saying, " Now I think I am a good- 20 
humoured fellow," though nobody thought him so, and yet he 
was ; his quitting the society of Garrick and his actresses, and 
his reason for it ; his dining with Wilkes, and his kindness to 
Goldsmith ; his sitting with the young ladies on his knee at the 
Mitre, to give them good advice, in which situation, if not ex- 25 
plained, he might be taken for Falstaff ; and last and noblest, 
his carrying the unfortunate victim of disease and dissipation on 
his back up through Fleet Street, (an act which realises the 
parable of the good Samaritan) — all these, and innumerable 
others, endear him to the reader, and must be remembered to 30 
his lasting honour. He had faults, but they lie buried with him. 
He had his prejudices and his intolerant feelings ; but he suf- 
fered enough in the conflict of his own mind with them. For if 
no man can be happy in the free exercise of his reason, no wise 



26 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

man can be happy without it. His were not time-serving, heart- 
less, hypocritical prejudices ; but deep, inwoven, not to be rooted 
out but with life and hope, which he found from old habit nec- 
essary to his own peace of mind, and thought so to the peace 
5 of mankind. I do not hate, but love him for them. They were 
between himself and his conscience ; and should be left to 
that higher tribunal, " where they in trembling hope repose, 
the bosom of his Father and his God." In a word, he has left 
behind him few wiser or better men. 

10 The herd of his imitators shewed what he was by their dis- 
proportionate effects. The Periodical Essayists, that succeeded 
the Rambler are, and deserve to be, little read at present. The 
Adventurer, by Hawksworth, is completely trite and vapid, aping 
all the faults of Johnson's style, without anything to atone for 

1 5 them. The sentences are often absolutely unmeaning ; and one 
half of each might regularly be left blank. The World, and 
Connoisseur, which followed, are a little better ; and in the last 
of these there is one good idea, that of a man in indifferent 
health, who judges of every one's title to respect from their 

20 possession of this blessing, and bows to a sturdy beggar with 
sound limbs and a florid complexion, while he turns his back 
upon a lord who is a valetudinarian. 

Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, like all his works, bears the 
stamp of the author's mind. It does not " go about to cozen 

25 reputation without the stamp of merit." He is more observing, 
more original, more natural and picturesque than Johnson. His 
work is written on the model of the Persian Letters ; and con- 
trives to give an abstracted and somewhat, perplexing view of 
things, by opposing foreign prepossessions to our own, and thus 

30 stripping objects of their customary disguises. Whether truth is 
' elicited in this collision of contrary absurdities, I do not know ; 
but I confess the process is too ambiguous and full of intricacy 
to be very amusing to my plain understanding. For light sum- 
mer reading, it is like walking in a garden full of traps and 



ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 2/ 

pitfalls. It necessarily gives rise to paradoxes, and there are 
some very bold ones in the Essays, which would subject an author 
less established to no very agreeable sort of censiira literaria. 
Thus the Chinese philosopher exclaims very unadvisedly, " The 
bonzes and priests of all religions keep up superstition and im- 5 
posture : all reformations begin with the laity." Goldsmith, 
however, was staunch in his practical creed, and might bolt spec- 
ulative extravagances with impunity. There is a striking differ- 
ence in this respect between him and Addison, who, if he 
attacked authority, took care to have common sense on his side, 10 
and never hazarded any thing offensive to the feelings of others, 
or on the strength of his own discretional opinion. There is 
another inconvenience in this assumption of an exotic character 
and tone of sentiment, that it produces an inconsistency between 
the knowledge which the individual has time to acquire, and 15 
which the author is bound to communicate. Thus the Chinese 
has not been in England three days before he is acquainted with 
the characters of the three countries which compose this king- 
dom, and describes them to his friend at Canton, by extracts 
from the newspapers of each metropolis. The nationality of 20 
Scotchmen is thus ridiculed : — " Edinburgh. We are positive 
when we say, that Sanders Macgregor, lately executed for 
horse-stealing, is not a native of Scotland, but born at Carrick- 
fergus." Now this is very good ; but how should our Chinese 
philosopher find it out by instinct ? Beau Tibbs, a prominent 25 
character in this little work, is the best comic sketch since 
the time of Addison ; unrivalled in his finery, his vanity, and 
his poverty. 

I have only to mention the names of the Lounger and the 
Mirror, which are ranked by the author's admirers with Sterne 30 
for sentiment, and with Addison for humour. I shall not enter 
into that: but I know that the story of La Roche is not like 
the story of Le Fevre, nor one hundredth part so good. Do I 
say this from prejudice to the author ? No : for I have read his 



28 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

novels. Of the Man of the World I cannot think so favourably 
as some others ; nor shall I here dwell on the picturesque and 
romantic beauties of Julia de Roubigne, the early favourite of 
the author of Rosamond Gray ; but of the Man of Feeling I 
5 would speak with grateful recollections : nor is it possible to 
forget the sensitive, irresolute, interesting Harley ; and that 
lone figure of Miss Walton in it, that floats in the horizon, dim 
and ethereal, the day-dream of her lover's youthful fancy — 
better, far better than all the realities of life ! 



CHARACTER OF MR. BURKE 

It is not without reluctance that we speak of the vices and 
infirmities of such a mind as Burke's : but the poison of high 
example has by far the widest range of destruction : and, for 
the sake of public honour and individual integrity, we think it 
right to say, that however it may be defended upon other grounds, 5 
the political career of that eminent individual has no title to the 
praise of consistency. Mr. Burke, the opponent of the Ameri- 
can war, and Mr. Burke, the opponent of the French Revolution, 
are not the same person, but opposite persons — not opposite 
persons only, but deadly enemies. In the latter period, he aban- 10 
doned not only all his practical conclusions, but all the principles 
on which they were founded. He proscribed all his former 
sentiments, denounced all his former friends, rejected and reviled 
all the maxims to which he had formerly appealed as incontest- 
able. In the American war, he constantly spoke of the rights 15 
of the people as inherent, and inalienable : after the French 
Revolution, he began by treating them with the chicanery of a 
sophist, and ended by raving at them with the fury of a maniac. 
In the former case, he held out the duty of resistance to 
oppression, as the palladium and only ultimate resource of 20 
natural liberty ; in the latter, he scouted, prejudged, vilified and 
nicknamed, all resistance in the abstract, as a foul and unnatu- 
ral union of rebellion and sacrilege. In the one case, to answer 
the purposes of faction, he made it out, that the people are 
always in the right ; in the other, to answer different ends, he 25 
made it out that they are always in the wrong — lunatics in the 
hands of their royal keepers, patients in the sick-wards of an 

29 



30 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

hospital, or felons in the condemned cells of a prison. In the 
one, he considered that there was a constant tendency on the 
part of the prerogative to encroach on the rights of the people, 
which ought always to be the object of the most watchful jeal- 
5 ousy, and of resistance, when necessary : in the other, he pre- 
tended to regard it as the sole occupation and ruling passion of 
those in power, to watch over the liberties and happiness of 
their subjects. The burthen of all his speeches on the American 
war, was conciliation, concession, timely reform, as the only 

10 practicable or desirable alternative of rebellion : the object of 
all his writings on the French Revolution was, to deprecate and 
explode all concession and all reform, as encouraging rebellion, 
and as an irretrievable step to revolution and anarchy. In the 
one, he insulted kings personally, as among the lowest and 

1 5 worst of mankind ; in the other, he held them up to the imagi- 
nation of his readers, as sacred abstractions. In the one case, 
he was a partisan of the people, to court popularity ; in the 
other, to gain the favour of the Court, he became the apologist 
of all courtly abuses. In the one case, he took part with those 

2o who were actually rebels against his Sovereign : in the other, he 
denounced as rebels and traitors, all those of his own country- 
men who did not yield sympathetic allegiance to a foreign 
Sovereign, whom we had always been in the habit of treating 
as an arbitrary tyrant. 

25 Nobody will accuse the principles of his present Majesty, or 
the general measures of his reign, of inconsistency. If they 
had no other merit, they have, at least, that of having been all 
along actuated by one uniform and constant spirit : yet Mr. 
Burke at one time vehemently opposed, and afterwards most 

30 intemperately extolled them : and it was for his recanting his 
opposition, not for his persevering in it, that he received his 
pension. He does not himself mention his flaming speeches in 
the American war, as among the public services which had 
entitled him to this remuneration. 



CHARACTER OF MR. BURKE 3 1 

The truth is, that Burke was a man of fine fancy and subtle 
reflection ; but not of sound and practical judgment, nor of high 
or rigid principles. — As to his understanding, he certainly was 
not a great philosopher ; for his works of mere abstract reason- 
ing are shallow and inefficient : — nor was he a man of sense and 5 
business ; for, both in counsel and in conduct, he alarmed his 
friends as much at least as his opponents : — but he was an 
acute and accomplished man of letters — • an ingenious political 
essayist. He applied the habit of reflection, which he had 
borrowed from his metaphysical studies, but which was not 10 
competent to the discovery of any elementary truth in that 
department, with great facility and success, to the mixed mass 
of human affairs. He knew more of the political machine than 
a recluse philosopher ; and he speculated more profoundly on 
its principles and general results than a mere politician. He 15 
saw a number of fine distinctions and changeable aspects of 
things, the good mixed with the ill, and the ill mixed with the 
good ; and with a sceptical indifference, in which the exercise 
of his own ingenuity was obviously the governing principle, 
suggested various topics to qualify or assist the judgment of 20 
others. But for this very reason, he was little calculated to 
become a leader or a partizan in any important practical measure. 
For the habit of his mind would lead him to find out a reason "., 
for or against any thing : and it is not on speculative refinements 
(which belong to every side of a question), but on a just estimate 25 
of the aggregate mass and extended combinations of objections 
and advantages, that we ought to decide or act. Burke had the 
power of throwing true or false weights into the scales of 
political casuistry, but not firmness of mind (or, shall we say 
honesty enough) to hold the balance. When he took a side, his 30 
vanity or his spleen more frequently gave the casting vote than 
his judgment ; and the fieriness of his zeal was in exact propor- 
tion to the levity of his understanding, and the want of conscious 
sincerity. 



32 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

He was fitted by nature and habit for the studies and labours 
of the closet ; and was generally mischievous when he came 
out ; because the very subtlety of his reasoning, which, left to 
itself, would have counteracted its own activity, or found its 
5 level in the common sense of mankind, became a dangerous 
engine in the hands of power, which is always eager to make 
use of the most plausible pretexts to cover the most fatal designs. 
That which, if applied as a general observation to human affairs, 
is a valuable truth suggested to the mind, may, when forced 

lo into the interested defence of a particular measure or system, 
become the grossest and basest sophistry. Facts or consequences 
never stood in the way of this speculative politician. He fitted 
them to his preconceived theories, instead of conforming his 
theories to them. They were the playthings of his style, the 

15 sport of his fancy. They were the straws of which his imagina- 
tion made a blaze, and were consumed, like straws, in the blaze 
they had served to kindle. The fine things he said about 
Liberty and Humanity, in his speech on the Begum's affairs, 
told equally well, whether Warren Hastings was a tyrant or 

20 not : nor did he care one jot who caused the famine he described, 
so that he described it in a way that no one else could. On the 
samie principle, he represented the French priests and nobles 
under the old regime as excellent moral people, very charitable 
and very religious, in the teeth of notorious facts, — to answer 

25 to the handsome things he had to say in favour of priesthood 
and nobility in general ; and, with similar views, he falsifies the 
records of our English Revolution, and puts an interpretation 
on the word abdication^ of which a schoolboy would be ashamed. 
He constructed his whole theory of government, in short, not 

30 on rational, but on picturesque and fanciful principles ; as if the 
king's crown were a painted gewgaw, to be looked at on gala- 
days ; titles an empty sound to please the ear ; and the whole 
order of society a theatrical procession. His lamentations over 
the age of chivalry, and his projected crusade to restore it, are 



CHARACTER OF MR. BURKE 33 

about as wise as if any one, from reading the Beggar's Opera, 
should take to picking of pockets : or, from admiring the land- 
scapes of Salvator Rosa, should wish to convert the abodes of 
civilised life into the haunts of wild beasts and banditti. On 
this principle of false refinement, there is no abuse, nor system 5 
of abuses, that does not admit of an easy and triumphant 
defence ; for there is something which a merely speculative 
inquirer may always find out, good as well as bad, in every 
possible system, the best or the worst ; and if we can once get 
rid of the restraints of common sense and honesty, we may 10 
easily prove, by plausible words, that liberty and slavery, peace 
and war, plenty and famine, are matters of perfect indifference. 
This is the school of politics, of which Mr. Burke was at the 
head ; and it is perhaps to his example, in this respect, that we 
owe the prevailing tone of many of those newspaper paragraphs, 1 5 
which Mr. Coleridge thinks so invaluable an accession to our 
political philosophy. 

Burke's literary talents were, after all, his chief excellence. 
His style has all the familiarity of conversation, and all the 
research of the most elaborate composition. He says what he 20 
wants to say, by any means, nearer or more remote, within his 
reach. He makes use of the most common or scientific terms, 
of the longest or shortest sentences, of the plainest and most 
downright, or of the most figurative modes of speech. He 
gives for the most part loose reins to his imagination, and 25 
follows it as far as the language will carry him. As long as the 
one or the other has any resources in store to make the reader 
feel and see the thing as he has conceived it, in its nicest shades 
of difference, in its utmost degree of force and splendour, he 
never disdains, and never fails to employ them. Yet, in the 30 
extremes of his mixed style, there is not much affectation, and 
but little either of pedantry or of coarseness. He everywhere 
gives the image he wishes to give, in its true and appropriate 
colouring : and it is the very crowd and variety of these images 



34 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

that has given to his language its peculiar tone of animation 
and even of passion. It is his impatience to transfer his con- 
ceptions entire, living, in all their rapidity, strength, and glancing 
variety, to the minds of others, that constantly pushes him to 
5 the verge of extravagance, and yet supports him there in 
dignified security — 

" Never so sure our rapture to create, 
As when he treads the brink of all we hate." 

He is the most poetical of our prose writers, and at the same 
ID time his prose never degenerates into the mere effeminacy of 
poetry ; for he always aims at overpowering rather than at pleas- 
ing ; and consequently sacrifices beauty and delicacy to force 
and vividness. He has invariably a task to perform, a positive 
purpose to execute, an effect to produce. His only object 
1 5 is therefore to strike hard, and in the I'ight place ; if he misses 
his mark, he repeats his blow ; and does not care how ungrace- 
ful the action, or how clumsy the instrument, provided it brings 
down his antagonist. 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 

The best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it 
is the natural impression of any object or event, by its vividness 
exciting an involuntary movement of imagination and passion, 
and producing, by sympathy, a certain modulation of the voice, 
or sounds, expressing it. 5 

In treating of poetry, I shall speak first of the subject-matter 
of it, next of the forms of expression to which it gives birth, 
and afterwards of its connection with harmony of sound. 

Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. 
It relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the 10 
human mind. It comes home to the bosoms and businesses of 
men ; for nothing but what so comes home to them in the 
most general and intelligible shape, can be a subject for poetry. 
Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with 
nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry cannot 15 
have much respect for himself, or for anything else. It is not 
a mere frivolous accomplishment, (as some persons have been 
led to imagine) the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or 
leisure hours — it has been the study and delight of mankind in 
all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something to be 20 
found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables, with like 
endings : but wherever there is a sense of beauty, or power, or 
harmony, as in the motion of a wave of the sea, in the growth 
of a flower that " spreads its sweet leaves to the air, and dedi- 
cates its beauty to the sun," — there is poetry, in its birth. If 25 
history is a grave study, poetry may be said to be a graver : its 
materials lie deeper, and are spread wider. History treats, for 

35 



36 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

the most part, of the cumbrous and unwieldy masses of things, 
the empty cases in which the affairs of the world are packed, 
under the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from 
century to century : but there is no thought or feeling that can 
5 have entered into the mind of man which he would be eager to 
cofnmunicate to others, or which they would listen to with 
delight, that is not a fit subject for poetry. It is not a branch 
of authorship : it is " the stuff of which our life is made." The 
rest is " mere oblivion," a dead letter : for all that is worth 

lo remembering in life, is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is 
poetry, love is poetry, hatred is poetry, contempt, jealousy, re- 
morse, admiration, wonder, pity, despair, or madness, are all 
poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within us, that expands, 
rarefies, refines, raises our whole being : without it " man's life 

15 is poor as beast's." Man is a poetical animal: and those of us 
who do not study the principles of poetry, act upon them all 
our lives, like Moliere's Bourgeois Geiitilhivnme, who had always 
spoken prose without knowing it. The child is a poet in fact, 
when he first plays at hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of 

20 Jack the Giant-killer ; the shepherd-boy is a poet, when he first 
crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers ; the countryman, 
when he stops to look at the rainbow ; the city-apprentice, when 
he gazes after the Lord-Mayor's show ; the miser, when he hugs 
his gold ; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile ; the 

25 savage, who paints his idol with blood ; the slave, who worships 
a tyrant, or the tyrant, who fancies himself a god ; — the vain, 
the ambitious, the proud, the choleric man, the hero and the 
coward, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor, the 
young and the old, all live in a world of their own making ; and 

30 the poet does no more than describe what all the others think 
and act. If his art is folly and madness, it is folly and madness 
at second hand. "There is warrant for it." Poets alone have 
not " such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that appre- 
hend more than cooler reason " can. 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 37 

" The lunatic, the lover, and the poet 

Are of imagination all compact. 

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ; 

The madman. While the lover, all as frantic, 

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. 5 

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 

Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n ; 

And as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 

Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing 10 

A local habitation and a name. 

Such tricks hath strong imagination." 

If poetry is a dream, the business of life is much the same. 
If it is a fiction, made up of what we wish things to be, and 
fancy that they are, because we wish them so, there is no other 15 
nor better reality. Ariosto has described the loves of Angelica 
and Medoro : but was not Medoro, who carved the name of 
his mistress on the barks of trees, as much enamoured of her 
charms as he ? Homer has celebrated the anger of Achilles : 
but was not the hero as mad as the poet ? Plato banished the 20 
poets from his Commonwealth, lest their descriptions of the 
natural man should spoil his mathematical man, who was to be 
without passions and affections, who was neither to laugh nor 
weep, to feel sorrow nor anger, to be cast down nor elated by 
any thing. This was a chimera, however, which never existed 25 
but in the brain of the inventor ; and Homer's] poetical world 
has outlived Plato's philosophical Republic. 

Poetry then is an imitation of nature, but the imagination 
and the passions are a part of man's nature. We shape things 
according to our wishes and fancies, without poetry ; but poetry 30 
is the most emphatical language that can be found for those 
creations of the mind "which ecstasy is very cunning in." Nei- 
ther a mere description of natural objects, nor a mere delineation 
of natural feelings, however distinct or forcible, constitutes the 
ultimate end and aim of poetry, without the heightenings of the 35 
imagination. The light of poetry is not only a direct but also a 



38 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

reflected light, that, while it shews us the object, throws a spark- 
ling radiance on all around it : the flame of the passions, com- 
municated to the imagination, reveals to us, as with a flash of 
lightning, the inmost recesses of thought, and penetrates our 
5 whole being. Poetry represents forms chiefly as they suggest 
other forms ; feelings, as they suggest forms or other feelings. 
Poetry puts a spirit of life and motion into the universe. It 
describes the flowing, not the fixed. It does not define the limits 
of sense, or analyse the distinctions of the understanding, but 

lo signifies the excess of the imagination beyond the actual or 
ordinary impression of any object or feeling. The poetical 
impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of 
beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself ; that is 
impatient of all limit ; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to 

1 5 link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur ; 
to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and 
to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the 
boldest manner, and by the most striking examples of the same 
quality in other instances. Poetry, according to Lord Bacon, 

2o for this reason, "has something divine in it, because it raises 
the mind and hurries it into sublimity, by conforming the shows 
of things to the desires of the soul, instead of subjecting the 
soul to external things, as reason and history do." It is strictly 
the language of the imagination ; and the imagination is that 

25 faculty which represents objects, not as they are in themselves, 
but as they are moulded by other thoughts and feelings, into an 
infinite variety of shapes and combinations of power. This lan- 
guage is not the less true to nature, because it is false in point 
of fact ; but so much the more true and natural, if it conveys 

30 the impression which the object under the influence of passion 
makes on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be presented 
to the senses in a state of agitation or fear — and the imagina- 
tion will distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the 
likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 39 

" Our eyes are made the fools " of our other faculties. This is 
the universal law of the imagination, 

" That if it would but apprehend some joy, 
It comprehends some bringer of that joy ; 
Or in the night imagining some fear, 5 

How easy is each bush suppos'd a bear ! " 

When lachimo says of Imogen, 

" The flame o' th' taper 

Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids 

To see the enclosed lights " — 10 

this passionate interpretation of the motion of the flame to ac- 
cord with the speaker's oWn feelings, is true poetry. The lover, 
equally with the poet, speaks of the auburn tresses of his mistress 
as locks of shining gold, because the least tinge of yellow in the 
hair has, from novelty and a sense of personal beauty, a more 1 5 
lustrous effect to the imagination than the purest gold. We com- 
pare a man of gigantic stature to a tower : not that he is any- 
thing like so large, but because the excess of his size beyond 
what we are accustomed to expect, or the usual size of things of 
the same class, produces by contrast a greater feeling of magni- 20 
tude and ponderous strength than another object of ten times the 
same dimensions. The intensity of the feeling makes up for the 
disproportion of the objects. Things are equal to the imagina- 
tion, which have the power of affecting the mind with an equal 
degree of terror, admiration, delight, or love. When Lear calls 25 
upon the heavens to avenge his cause, " for they are old like 
him," there is nothing extravagant or impious in this sublime 
identification of his age with theirs ; for there is no other image 
which could do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs and 
his despair ! 30 

Poetry is the high-wrought enthusiasm of fancy and feeling. 
As in describing natural objects, it impregnates sensible impres- 
sions with the forms of fancy, so it describes the feelings of 
pleasure or pain, by blending them with the strongest movements 



40 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

of passion, and the most striking forms of nature. Tragic poetry, 
which is the most impassioned species of it, strives to carry on 
the feeling to the utmost point of sublimity or pathos, by all the 
force of comparison or contrast ; loses the sense of present suffer- 
5 ing in the imaginary exaggeration of it ; exhausts the terror or 
pity by an unlimited indulgence of it ; grapples with impossibil- 
ities in its desperate impatience of restraint ; throws us back upon 
the past, forward into the future ; brings every moment of our 
being or object of nature in startling review before us ; and in 

lo the rapid whirl of events, lifts us from the depths of woe to the 
highest contemplations on human life. When Lear says of Edgar, 
" Nothing but his unkind daughters 'could have brought him to 
this," what a bewildered amazement, what a wrench of the 
imagination, that cannot be brought to conceive of any other 

15 cause of misery than that which has bowed it down, and absorbs 
all other sorrow in its own ! His sorrow, like a flood, supplies 
the sources of all other sorrow. Again, when he exclaims in the 
mad scene, " The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanche, and Sweet- 
heart, see, they bark at me!" it is passion lending occasion to 

20 imagination to make every creature in league against him, con- 
juring up ingratitude and insult in their least looked-for and 
most galling shapes, searching every thread and fibre of his heart, 
and finding out the last remaining image of respect or attach- 
ment in the bottom of his breast, only to torture and kill it ! In 

25 like manner, the " So I am " of Cordelia, gushes from her heart 
like a torrent of tears, relieving it of a weight of love and of sup- 
posed ingratitude, which had pressed upon it for years. What a 
fine return of the passion upon itself is that in Othello — with 
what a mingled agony of regret and despair he clings to the last 

30 traces of departed happiness — when he exclaims, 

'' Oh now, for ever 

Farewel the tranquil mind. Farewel content; 
Farewel the plumed troops and the big war, 
That make ambition virtue ! Oh farewel ! 
Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump. 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 4I 

The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife, 

The royal banner, and all quality. 

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war : 

And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats 

Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, 5 

Farewel ! Othello's occupation 's gone ! " 

How his passion lashes itself up and swells and rages like a tide 
in its sounding course, when in answer to the doubts expressed 
of his returning love, he says, 

" Never, lago. Like to the Pontic sea, 10 

Whose icy current and compulsive course 
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
To the Propontic and the Hellespont : 
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace. 
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, le 

Till that a capable and wide revenge 
Swallow them up." 

The climax of his expostulation afterwards with Desdemona 

is at that line, 

" But there where I have garner'd up my heart, 20 

To be discarded thence ! " 

One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion excites 
our sympathy without raising our disgust is, that in proportion 
as it sharpens the edge of calamity and disappointment, it 
strengthens the desire of good. It enhances our consciousness 25 
of the blessing, by making us sensible of the magnitude of the 
loss. The storm of passion lays bare and shews us the rich 
depths of the human soul : the whole of our existence, the sum 
total of our passions and pursuits, of that which we desire and 
that which we dread, is brought before us by contrast ; the ac- 30 
tion and re-action are equal ; the keenness of immediate suffer- 
ing only gives us a more intense aspiration after, and a more 
intimate participation with the antagonist world of good ; makes 
us drink deeper of the cup of human life ; tugs at the heart- 
strings ; loosens the pressure about them ; and calls the springs 35 
of thought and feeling into play with tenfold force. 



42 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellec- 
tual part of our nature, as well as of the sensitive — of the de- 
sire to know, the will to act, and the power to feel ; and ought 
to appeal to these different parts of our constitution, in order to 
5 be perfect. The domestic or prose tragedy, which is thought to 
be the most natural, is in this sense the least so, because it 
appeals almost exclusively to one of these faculties, our sensi- 
bility. The tragedies of Moore and Lillo, for this reason, how- 
ever affecting at the time, oppress and lie like a dead weight on 

lo the mind, a load of misery which it is unable to throw off ; the 
tragedy of Shakspeare, which is true poetry, stirs our inmost 
affections, abstracts evil from itself by combining it with all the 
forms of imagination, and with the deepest workings of the 
heart ; and rouses the whole man within us. 

15 The pleasure, however, derived from tragic poetry is not 
any thing peculiar to it as poetry, as a fictitious and fanciful 
thing. It is not an anomaly of the imagination. It has its source 
and ground-work in the common love of strong excitement. As 
Mr. Burke observes, people flock to see a tragedy ; but if there 

20 were a public execution in the next street, the theatre would 
soon be empty. It is not then the difference between fiction and 
reality that solves the difficulty. Children are satisfied with the 
stories of ghosts and witches in plain prose : nor do the hawkers 
of full, true, and particular accounts of murders and executions 

25 about the streets find it necessary to have them turned into 
penny ballads, before they can dispose of these interesting and 
authentic documents. The grave politician drives a thriving trade 
of abuse and calumnies poured out against those whom he makes 
his enemies for no other end than that he may live by them. 

30 The popular preacher makes less frequent mention of heaven 
than of hell. Oaths and nicknames are only a more vulgar sort 
of poetry or rhetoric. We are as fond of indulging our violent 
passions as of reading a description of those of others. We are 
as prone to make a torment of our fears, as to luxuriate in our 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 43 

hopes of good. If it be asked, Why we do so ? the best answer 

will be, because we cannot help it. The sense of power is as 

strong a principle in the mind as the love of pleasure. Objects of 

terror and pity exercise the same despotic control over it as those 

of love or beauty. It is as natural to hate as to love, to despise 5 

as to admire, to express our hatred or contempt, as our love or 

admiration : 

" Masterless passion sways us to the mood 

Of what it Hkes or loathes." 

Not that we like what we loathe ; but we like to indulge our 10 
hatred and scorn of it, to dwell upon it, to exasperate our idea 
of it by every refinement of ingenuity and extravagance of illus- 
tration ; to make it a bugbear to ourselves, to point it out to 
others in all the splendour of deformity, to embody it to the 
senses, to stigmatise it by name, to grapple with it in thought 15 

— in action, to sharpen our intellect, to arm our will against it, 
to know the worst we have to contend with, and to contend 
with it to the utmost. Poetry is only the highest eloquence of 
passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to 
our conception of any thing, whether pleasurable or painful, mean 20 
or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence 

of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of 
which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant 
" satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit 
and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. 25 
When Pope says of the Lord Mayor's shew, — 

" Now night descending, the proud scene is o'er, 
But lives in Settle's numbers one day more ! " 

— when Collins makes Danger, " with limbs of giant mould," 

" Throw him on the steep 30 

Of some loose hanging rock asleep " : 

when Lear calls out in extreme anguish, 

" Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, 

How much more hideous, shew'st in a child 
. Than the sea-monster ! " 35 



44 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

— the passion of contempt in the one case, of terror in the other, 
and of indignation in the last, is perfectly satisfied. We see the 
thing ourselves, and shew it to others as we feel it to exist, and 
as, in spite of ourselves, we are compelled to think of it. The 
5 imagination, by thus embodying and turning them to shape, gives 
an obvious relief to the indistinct and importunate cravings of 
the will. — We do not wish the thing to be so ; but we wish it 
to appear such as it is. For knowledge is conscious power ; and 
the mind is no longer, in this case, the dupe, though it may be 

lo the victim of vice or folly. 

Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination and 
the passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, can be more 
absurd than the outcry which has been sometimes raised by frigid 
and pedantic critics, for reducing the language of poetry to the 

1 5 standard of common sense and reason : for the end and use of 
poetry, "both at the first and now, was and is to hold the mirror 
up to nature," seen through the medium of passion and imagina- 
tion, not divested of that medium by means of literal truth or 
abstract reason. The painter of history might as well be re- 

2o quired to represent the face of a person who has just trod 
upon a serpent with the still-life expression of a common por- 
trait, as the poet to describe the most striking and vivid impres- 
sions which things can be supposed to make upon the mind, in 
the language of common conversation. Let who will strip nature 

25 of the colours and the shapes of fancy, the poet is not bound 
to do so : the impressions of common sense and strong imagina- 
tion, that is, of passion and indifference, cannot be the same, 
and they must have a separate language to do justice to either. 
Objects must strike differently upon the mind, independently of 

30 what they are in themselves, as long as we have a different 
interest in them, as we see them in a different point of view, 
nearer or at a greater distance (morally or physically speaking) 
from novelty, from old acquaintance, from our ignorance of 
them, from our fear of their consequences, from contrast, from 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 45 

unexpected likeness. We can no more take away the faculty 
of the imagination, than we can see all objects without light or 
shade. Some things must dazzle us by their preternatural light ; 
others must hold us in suspense, and tempt our curiosity to 
explore their obscurity. Those who would dispel these various 5 
illusions, to give us their drab-coloured creation in their stead, 
are not very wise. Let the naturalist, if he will, catch the glow- 
worm, carry it home with him in a box, and find it next morning 
nothing but a little grey worm ; let the poet or the lover of 
poetry visit it at evening, when beneath the scented hawthorn 10 
and the crescent moon it has built itself a palace of emerald 
light. This is also one part of nature, one appearance which 
the glow-worm presents, and that not the least interesting ; so 
poetry is one part of the history of the human mind, though it 
is neither science nor philosophy. It cannot be concealed, how- 1 5 
ever, that the progress of knowledge and refinement has a tend- 
ency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination, and to clip 
the wings of poetry. The province of the imagination is princi- 
pally visionary, the unknown and undefined : the understanding 
restores things to their natural boundaries, and strips them of 20 
their fanciful pretensions. Hence the history of religious and 
poetical enthusiasm is much the same ; and both have received 
a sensible shock from the progress of experimental philosophy. 
It is the undefined and uncommon that gives birth and scope to 
the imagination : we can only fancy what we do not know. As 25 
in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with 
what shapes we please, with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, 
and drear enchantments, so in our ignorance of the world about 
us, we make gods or devils of the first object we see, and set 
no bounds to the wilful suggestions of our hopes and fears. 30 

" And visions, as poetic eyes avow, 
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough." 

There can never be another Jacob's Dream. Since that time, the 
heavens have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They 



46 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

have become averse to the imagination, nor will they return to 
us on the squares of the distances, or on Doctor Chalmers's 
Discourses. Rembrandt's picture brings the matter nearer to 
us. — It is not only the progress of mechanical knowledge, but 
5 the necessary advances of civilization that are unfavourable to 
the spirit of poetry. We not only stand in less awe of the pre- 
ternatural world, but we can calculate more surely, and look 
with more indifference, upon the regular routine of this. The 
heroes of the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters and giants. 

10 At present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes of good or 
evil, to the incursions of wild beasts or " bandit fierce," or to 
the unmitigated fury of the elements. The time has been that 
" our fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life 
were in it." But the police spoils all ; and we now hardly so 

1 5 much as dream of a midnight murder. Macbeth is only tolerated 
in this country for the sake of the music ; and in the United 
States of America, where the philosophical principles of gov- 
ernment are carried still farther in theory and practice, we find 
that the Beggar's Opera is hooted from the stage. Society, by 

2o degrees, is constructed into a machine that carries us safely and 

insipidly from one end of life to the other, in a very comfortable 

prose style. 

" Obscurity her curtain round them drew, 
And siren Sloth a dull quietus sung." 

25 The remarks which have been here made, would, in some meas- 
ure, lead to a solution of the question of the comparative merits 
of painting and poetry. I do not mean to give any preference, 
but it should seem that the argument which has been sometimes 
set up, that painting must affect the imagination more strongly, 

30 because it represents the image more distinctly, is not well 
founded. We may assume without much temerity, that poetry 
is more poetical than painting. When artists or connoisseurs 
talk on stilts about the poetry of painting, they shew that 
they know little about poetry, and have little love for the art. 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 47 

Painting gives the object itself ; poetry what it implies. Painting 
embodies what a thing contains in itself ; poetry suggests what 
exists out of it, in any manner connected with it. But this last 
is the proper province of the imagination. Again, as it relates to 
passion, painting gives the event, poetry the progress of events : 5 
but it is during the progress, in the interval of expectation and 
suspense, while our hopes and fears are strained to the highest 
pitch of breathless agony, that the pinch of the interest lies. 

" Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
And the first motion, all the interim is 10 

Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. 
The mortal instruments are then in council ; 
And the state of man, like to a little kingdom, 
Suffers then the nature of an insurrection." 

But by the time that the picture is painted, all is over. Faces 1 5 
are the best part of a picture ; but even faces are not what we 
chiefly remember in what interests us most. But it may be asked 
then, Is there anything better than Claude Lorraine's landscapes, 
than Titian's portraits, than Raphael's cartoons, or the Greek 
statues ? Of the two first I shall say nothing, as they are evi- 20 
dently picturesque, rather than imaginative. Raphael's cartoons 
are certainly the finest comments that ever were made on the 
Scriptures. Would their effect be the same if we were not ac- 
quainted with the text ? But the New Testament existed before 
the cartoons. There is one subject of which there is no cartoon, 25 
Christ washing the feet of the disciples the night before his death. 
But that chapter does not need a commentary ! It is for want 
of some such resting-place for the imagination that the Greek 
statues are little else than specious forms. They are marble to 
the touch and to the heart. They have not an informing principle 30 

within them : . j^, ^^^^^^^ g^ow 

Elaborate, of inward less exact." 

In their faultless excellence they appear sufficient to themselves. 
By their beauty they are raised above the frailties of passion or 35 



48 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

suffering. By their beauty they are deified. But they are not 
objects of religious faith to us, and their forms are a reproach 
to common humanity. They seem to have no sympathy with 
us, and not to want our admiration. 
5 Poetry in its matter and form is natural imagery or feeling, 
combined with passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, 
it combines the ordinary use of language with musical expres- 
sion. There is a question of long standing, in what the essence 
of poetry consists, or what it is that determines why one set of 
lo ideas should be expressed in prose, another in verse. Milton 
has told us his idea of poetry in a single line — 

" Thoughts that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers." 

As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, 
15 and the song and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, 
certain thoughts that lead to certain tones of voice, or modula- 
tions of sound, and change " the words of Mercury into the songs 
of Apollo." There is a striking instance of this adaptation of the 
movement of sound and rhythm to the subject, in Spenser's de- 
20 scription of the Satyrs accompanying Una to the cave of Sylvanus. 

"So from the ground she fearless doth arise 
And walketh forth without suspect of crime. 
They, all as glad as birds of joyous prime, 

Thence lead her forth, about her dancing round, 
25 Shouting and singing all a shepherd's rhyme; 

And with green branches strewing all the ground, 
Do worship her as queen with olive garland crown'd. 

And all the way their merry pipes they sound. 
That all the woods and doubled echoes ring ; 
30 And with their horned feet do wear the ground, 

Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring ; 
So towards old Sylvanus they her bring. 
Who with the noise awaked, cometh out." 

Faery Qiceen, b. i. c. vi. 

On the contrary, there is nothing either musical or natural in 
35 the ordinary construction of language. It is a thing altogether 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 49 

arbitrary and conventional. Neither in the sounds themselves, 
which are the voluntary signs of certain ideas, nor in their gram- 
matical arrangements in common speech, is there any principle 
of natural imitation, or correspondence to the individual ideas, 
or to the tone of feeling vs^ith which they are conveyed to 5 
others. The jerks, the breaks, the inequalities, and harsh- 
nesses of prose, are fatal to the flow of a poetical imagina- 
tion, as a jolting road or a stumbling horse disturbs the reverie 
of an absent man. But poetry makes these odds all even. It 
is the music of language, answering to the music of the mind, 10 
untying as it were " the secret soul of harmony." Wherever 
any object takes such a hold of the mind as to make us 
dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in tender- 
ness, or kindling it to a sentiment of enthusiasm ; — wherever 
a movement of imagination or passion is impressed on the 15 
mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, 
to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give 
the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, 
or gradually varied according to the occasion, to the sounds 
that express it — this is poetry. The musical in sound is the 20 
sustained and continuous ; the musical in thought is the sus- 
tained and continuous also. There is a near connection between 
music and deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing. As often as 
articulation passes naturally into intonation, there poetry be- 
gins. Where one idea gives a tone and colour to others, where 25 
one feeling melts others into it, there can be no reason why the 
same principle should not be extended to the sounds by which 
the voice utters these emotions of the soul, and blends syllables 
and lines into each other. It is to supply the inherent defect of 
harmony in the customary mechanism of language, to make the 30 
sound an echo to the sense, when the sense becomes a sort of 
echo to itself — to mingle the tide of verse, " the golden cadences 
of poetry," with the tide of feeling, flowing and murmuring as 
it flows — in short, to take the language of the imagination from 



50 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

off the ground, and enable it to spread its wings where it may 
indulge its own impulses — 

" Sailing with supreme dominion 
Through the azure deep of air " — 

5 without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abrupt- 
nesses and petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of 
prose, that poetry was invented. It is to common language, 
what springs are to a carriage, or wings to feet. In ordinary 
speech we arrive at a certain harmony by the modulations of 

10 the voice : in poetry the same thing is done systematically by a 
regular collocation of syllables. It has been well observed, that 
every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a subject, 
rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose. The mer- 
chant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way " sounding al- 

15 ways the increase of his winning." Every prose-writer has more 
or less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who, when deprived 
of the regular mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle of 
modulation left in their writings. 

An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same manner. It 

20 is but fair that the ear should linger on the sounds that delight 
it, or avail itself of the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected 
recurrence of syllables, that have been displayed in the invention 
and collocation of images. It is allowed that rhyme assists the 
memory ; and a man of wit and shrewdness has been heard to 

25 say, that the only four good lines of poetry are the well-known 
ones which tell the number of days in the months of the year. 

" Thirty days hath September," &c. 

But if the jingle of names assists the memory, may it not also 
quicken the fancy .'' and there are other things worth having at 
30 our finger's ends, besides the contents of the almanac. — ■ Pope's 
versification is tiresome, from its excessive sweetness and uni- 
formity. Shakspeare's blank verse is the perfection of dramatic 
dialogue. 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 5 1 

All is not poetry that passes for such : nor does verse make 
the whole difference between poetry and prose. The Iliad does 
not cease to be poetry in a literal translation ; and Addison's 
Campaign has been very properly denominated a Gazette in 
rhyme. Common prose differs from poetry, as treating for the 5 
most part either of such trite, familiar, and irksome matters of 
fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the imagination, or 
else of such difficult and laborious processes of the understand- 
ing, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements 
either of the imagination or the passions. 10 

I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as 
possible without absolutely being so, namely, the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress, Robinson Crusoe, and the Tales of Boccaccio. Chaucer 
and Dryden have translated some of the last into English 
rhyme, but the essence and the power of poetry was there be- 15 
fore. That which lifts the spirit above the earth, which draws 
the soul out of itself with indescribable longings, is poetry in 
kind, and generally fit to become so in name, by being " married 
to immortal verse." If it is of the essence of poetry to strike 
and fix the imagination, whether we will or no, to make the eye 20 
of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to be never thought 
of afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe 
may be permitted to pass for poets in their way. The mix- 
ture of fancy and reality in the Pilgrim's Progress was never 
equalled in any allegory. His pilgrims walk above the earth, 25 
and yet are on it. What zeal, what beauty, what truth of fiction ! 
What deep feeling in the description of Christian's swimming 
across the water at last, and in the picture of the Shining Ones 
within the gates, with wings at their backs and garlands on their 
heads, who are to wipe all tears from his eyes ! The writer's 30 
genius, though not " dipped in dews of Castalie," was baptised 
with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The prints in this book are 
no small part of it. If the confinement of Philoctetes in the 
island of Lemnos was a subject for the most beautiful of all the 



52 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Greek tragedies, what shall we say to Robinson Crusoe in his ? 
Take the speech of the Greek hero on leaving his cave, beautiful 
as it is, and compare it with the reflections of the English ad- 
venturer in his solitary place of confinement. The thoughts of 
5 home, and of all from which he is for ever cut off, swell and 
press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean rolls its ceaseless 
tide against the rocky shore, and the very beatings of his heart 
become audible in the eternal silence that surrounds him. Thus 
he says, 

10 "As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the country, 
the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a 
sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, 
the mountains, the deserts I was in ; and how I was a prisoner, locked 
up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wil- 

15 derness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures 
of my mind, this would break out upon me hke a storm, and make me 
wring my hands, and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in 
the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and 
look upon the ground for an hour or two together, and this was still 

20 worse to me, for if I could burst into tears or vent myself in words, it 
would go off, and the grief having exhausted itself would abate." P. 50. 

The story of his adventures would not make a poem like the 
Odyssey, it is true ; but the relator had the true genius of a 
poet. It has been made a question whether Richardson's ro- 

25 mances are poetry; and the answer perhaps is, that they are 
not poetry, because they are not romance. The interest is 
worked up to an inconceivable height ; but it is by an infinite 
number of little things, by incessant labour and calls upon the 
attention, by a repetition of blows that have no rebound in them. 

30 The sympathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a tax. 
Nothing is unforced and spontaneous. There is a want of elas- 
ticity and motion. The story does not " give an echo to the seat 
where love is throned." The heart does not answer of itself like 
a chord in music. The fancy does not run on before the writer 

35 with breathless expectation, but is dragged along with an infinite 
number of pins and wheels, like those with which the Lilliputians 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 53 

dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace. — Sir Charles 
Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of a figure would he cut 
translated into an epic poem by the side of Achilles ? Clarissa, 
the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half. She is interesting 
in her ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts and uncles 5 
— she is interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such things, 
how^ever intensely they may be brought home to us, are not 
conductors to the imagination. There is infinite truth and feeling 
in Richardson ; but it is extracted from a caput moiiuimi of 
circumstances : it does not evaporate of itself. His poetical 10 
genius is like Ariel confined in a pine-tree, and requires an artifi- 
cial process to let it out. Shakespeare says — 

" Our poesy is as a gum, 

Which issues whence 't is nourished, our gentle flame 

Provokes itself, and like the current flies 15 

Each bound it chafes." ^ 

I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on 
four of the principal works of poetry in the world, at different 
periods of history — Homer, the Bible, Dante, and let me add 
Ossian. In Homer, the principle of action or life is predominant ; 20 
in the Bible, the principle of faith and the idea of Providence; 
Dante is a personification of blind will ; and in Ossian we see 
the decay of life, and the lag-end of the world. Homer's poetry 
is the heroic : it is full of life and action ; it is bright as the 
day, strong as a river. In the vigour of his intellect, he grapples 25 
with all the objects of nature, and enters into all the relations of 

1 Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of the fancy, 
because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural, but artificial. The 
difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the one is the eloquence of the 
imagination, and the other of the understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade 
the will, and convince the reason : poetry produces its effect by instantaneous 
sympathy. Nothing is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are 
in general bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, are 
not to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry wants 
the forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic. And some of 
our own poetry which has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme, and 
in the studied use of poetic diction. 



54 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

social life. He saw many countries, and the manners of many 
men ; and he has brought them all together in his poem. He 
describes his heroes going to battle with a prodigality of life, 
arising from an exuberance of animal spirits : we see them be- 
5 fore us, their number, and their order of battle, poured out upon 
the plain " all plumed like ostriches, like eagles newly bathed, 
wanton as goats, wild as young bulls, youthful as May, and 
gorgeous as the sun at midsummer," covered with glittering 
armour, with dust and blood ; while the gods quaff their nectar 

lo in golden cups, or mingle in the fray ; and the old men assem- 
bled on the walls of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen 
passes by them. The multitude of things in Homer is wonder- 
ful ; their splendour, their truth, their force, and variety. His 
poetry is, like his religion, the poetry of number and form : he 

15 describes the bodies as well as the souls of men. 

The poetry of the Bible is that of imagination and of faith : 
it is abstract and disembodied : it is not the poetry of form, but 
of power ; not of multitude, but of immensity. It does not di- 
vide into many, but aggrandizes into one. Its ideas of nature are 

20 like its ideas of God. It is not the poetry of social life, but of 
solitude : each man seems alone in the world, with the original 
forms of nature, the rocks, the earth, and the sky. It is not the 
poetry of action or heroic enterprise, but of faith in a supreme 
Providence, and resignation to the power that governs the uni- 

25 verse. As the idea of God was removed farther from humanity, 
and a scattered polytheism, it became more profound and in- 
tense, as it became more universal, for the Infinite is present to 
everything : " If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, 
it is there also ; if we turn to the east or the west, we cannot 

30 escape from it." Man is thus aggrandised in the image of his 
Maker. The history of the patriarchs is of this kind ; they are 
founders of a chosen race of people, the inheritors of the earth ; 
they exist in the generations which are to come after them. 
Their poetry, like their religious creed, is vast, unformed, 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 55 

obscure and infinite ; a vision is upon it — ■ an invisible hand is 
suspended over it. The spirit of the Christian religion consists in 
the glory hereafter to be revealed ; but in the Hebrew dispensa- 
tion, Providence took an immediate share in the affairs of this life. 
Jacob's dream arose out of this intimate communion between 5 
heaven and earth : it was this that let down, in the sight of the 
youthful patriarch, a golden ladder from the sky to the earth, with 
angels ascending and descending upon it, and shed a light upon 
the lonely place, which can never pass away. The story of Ruth, 
again, is as if all the depth of natural affection in the human race 10 
was involved in her breast. There are descriptions in the book of 
Job more prodigal of imagery, more intense in passion, than any 
thing in Homer, as that of the state of his prosperity, and of the 
vision that came upon him by night. The metaphors in the Old 
Testament are more boldly figurative. Things were collected more 1 5 
into masses, and gave a greater momentum to the imagination. 

Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore 
claim a place in this connection. His poem is the first great 
step from Gothic darkness and barbarism ; and the struggle of 
thought in it to burst the thraldom in which the human mind had 20 
been so long held, is felt in every page. He stood bewildered, 
not appalled, on that dark shore which separates the ancient 
and the modern world ; and saw the glories of antiquity dawn- 
ing through the abyss of time, while revelation opened its pas- 
sage to the other world. He was lost in wonder at what had 25 
been done before him, and he dared to emulate it. Dante seems 
to have been indebted to the Bible for the gloomy tone of his 
mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which exalts and kindles 
his poetry ; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His genius is not 
a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of a furnace. He is power, 30 
passion, self-will personified. In all that relates to the descrip- 
tive or fanciful part of poetry, he bears no comparison to many 
who had gone before, or who have come after him ; but there 
is a gloomy abstraction in his conceptions, which lies like a dead 



56 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

weight upon the mind ; a benumbing stupor, a breathless awe, 
from the intensity of the impression ; a terrible obscurity, like 
that which oppresses us in dreams ; an identity of interest, which 
moulds every object to its own purposes, and clothes all things 
5 with the passions and imaginations of the human soul, — that 
make amends for all other deficiencies. The immediate objects 
he presents to the mind, are not much in themselves, they want 
grandeur, beauty, and order; but they become everything by 
the force of the character he impresses upon them. His mind 

10 lends its own power to the objects which it contemplates, instead 
of borrowing it from them. He takes advantage even of the 
nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination 
peoples the shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He 
is the severest of all writers, the most hard and impenetrable, 

1 5 the most opposite to the flowery and glittering ; who relies most 
on his own power, and the sense of it in others, and who leaves 
most room to the imagination of his readers. Dante's only en- 
deavour is to interest ; ■ and he interests by exciting our sympathy 
with the emotion by vi^hich he is himself possessed. He does 

20 not place before us the objects by which that emotion has been 
created ; but he seizes on the attention, by shewing us the effect 
they produce on his feelings ; and his poetry accordingly gives 
the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation, which is caught by 
gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. 

25 The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony 
in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from 
the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great 
power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. 
Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is 

30 written, seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, 
and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of mortal 
woes. This author habitually unites the absolutely local and in- 
dividual with the greatest wildness and mysticism. In the midst 
of the obscure and shadowy regions of the lower world, a tomb 



ON POETRY IN GENERAL 57 

suddenly rises up with the inscription, " I am the tomb of Pope 
Anastasius the Sixth: " and half the personages whom he has 
crowded into the Inferno are his own acquaintance. All this, 
perhaps, tends to heighten the effect by the bold intermixture of 
realities, and by an appeal, as it were, to the individual knowl- 5 
edge and experience of the reader. He affords few subjects for 
picture. There is, indeed, one gigantic one, that of Count Ugo- 
lino, of which Michael Angelo made a bas-relief, and which Sir 
Joshua Reynolds ought not to have painted. 

Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I can- 10 
not persuade myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork, 
is Ossian. He is a feeling and a name that can never be de- 
stroyed in the minds of his readers. As Homer is the first vig- 
our and lustihed, Ossian is the decay and old age of poetry. He 
lives only in the recollection and regret of the past. There is 15 
one impression which he conveys more entirely than all other 
poets, namely, the sense of privation, the loss of all things, of 
friends, of good name, of country — he is even without God in 
the world. He converses only with the spirits of the departed ; 
with the motionless and silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds 20 
its faint lustre on his head ; the fox peeps out of the ruined 
tower ; the thistle waves its beard to the wandering gale ; and 
the strings of his harp seem, as the hand of age, as the tale of 
other times, passes over them, to sigh and rustle like the dry reeds 
in the winter's wind ! The feeling of cheerless desolation, of the 25 
loss of the pith and sap of existence, of the annihilation of the 
substance, and the clinging to the shadow of all things as in a 
mock-embrace, is here perfect. In this way, the lamentation of 
Selma for the loss of Salgar is the finest of all. If it were in- 
deed possible to shew that this writer was nothing, it would only 30 
be another instance of mutability, another blank made, another 
void left in the heart, another confirmation of that feeling which 
makes him so often complain, " Roll on, ye dark brown years, 
ye bring no joy on your wing to Ossian ! " 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 

The age of Elizabeth was distinguished, beyond, perhaps, any 
other in our history, by a number of great men, famous in dif- 
ferent ways, and whose names have come down to us with un- 
blemished honours ; statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, 
5 and philosophers ; Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher 
and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths, 
Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and 
Fletcher, men whom fame has eternised in her long and lasting 
scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of 

lo their country, and ornaments of human nature. Their attain- 
ments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was 
sterling : what they did, had the mark of their age and country 
upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak 
without offence or flattery), never shone out fuller or brighter, or 

1 5 looked more like itself, than at this period. Our writers and great 
men had something in them that savoured of the soil from which 
they grew : they were not French, they were not Dutch, or Ger- 
man, or Greek, or Latin ; they were truly English. They did not 
look out of themselves to see what they should be ; they sought 

20 for truth and nature, and found it in themselves. There was no 
tinsel, and but litde art ; they were not the spoilt children of affec- 
tation and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, independent race of 
thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy, with none but 
natural grace, and heartfelt unobtrusive delicacy. They were not 

25 at all sophisticated. The mind of their country was great in them, 
and it prevailed. With their learning and unexampled acquire- 
ment, they did not forget that they were men : with all their en- 
deavours after excellence, they did not lay aside the strong original 

58 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 59 

bent and character of their minds. What they performed was 
chiefly nature's handy-work ; and time has claimed it for his own. 
— ■ To these, however, might be added others not less learned, 
nor with a scarce less happy vein, but less fortunate in the event, 
who, though as renowned in their day, have sunk into " mere 5 
oblivion," and of whom the only record (but that the noblest) 
is to be found in their works. Their works and their names, 
'' poor, poor dumb names," are all that remains of such men as 
Webster, Deckar, Marston, Marlow, Chapman, Heywood, Mid- 
dleton, and Rowley ! " How lov'd, how honour'd once, avails 10 
them not : " though they were the friends and fellow-labourers of 
Shakespear, sharing his fame and fortunes with him, the rivals of 
Jonson, and the masters of Beaumont and Fletcher's well-sung 
woes ! They went out one by one unnoticed, like evening lights ; 
or were swallowed up in the headlong torrent of puritanic zeal 1 5 
which succeeded, and swept away everything in its unsparing 
course, throwing up the wrecks of taste and genius at random, 
and at long fitful intervals, amidst the painted gewgaws and 
foreign frippery of the reign of Charles II. and from which we 
are only now recovering the scattered fragments and broken 20 
images to erect a temple to true Fame ! How long before it 
will be completed ? 

If I can do anything to rescue some of these writers from 
hopeless obscurity, and to do them right, without prejudice to 
well-deserved reputation, I shall have succeeded in what I chiefly 25 
propose. I shall not attempt, indeed, to adjust the spelling or 
restore the pointing, as if the genius of poetry lay hid in errors 
of the press, but leaving these weightier matters of criticism to 
those who are more able and willing to bear the burden, try to 
bring out their real beauties to the eager sight, " draw the cur- 30 
tain of Time, and show the picture of Genius," restraining my 
own admiration within reasonable bounds ! 

There is not a lower ambition, a poorer way of thought, than 
that which would confine all excellence, or arrogate its final 



6o SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

accomplishment to the present or modern times. We ordinarily 
speak and think of those who had the misfortune to write or 
live before us, as labouring under very singular privations and 
disadvantages in not having the benefit of those improvements 
5 which we have made, as buried in the grossest ignorance, or 
the slaves " of poring pedantry ; " and we make a cheap and 
infallible estimate of their progress in civilization upon a gradu- 
ated scale of perfectibility, calculated from the meridian of our 
own times. If we have pretty well got rid of the narrow bigotry 

lo that would limit all sense or virtue to our own country, and 
have fraternized, like true cosmopolites, with our neighbours 
and contemporaries, we have made our self-love amends by let- 
ting the generation we live in engross nearly all our admiration 
and by pronouncing a sweeping sentence of barbarism and igno- 

15 ranee on our ancestry backwards, from the commencement (as 
near as can be) of the nineteenth, or the latter end of the eight- 
eenth century. From thence we date a new era, the dawn of 
our own intellect and that of the world, like " the sacred influ- 
ence of light " glimmering on the confines of Chaos and old 

20 night ; new manners rise, and all the cumbrous " pomp of elder 
days " vanishes, and is lost in worse than Gothic darkness. 
Pavilioned in the glittering pride of our superficial accomplish- 
ments and upstart pretensions, we fancy that everything beyond 
that magic circle is prejudice and error ; and all, before the pres- 

25 ent enlightened period, but a dull and useless blank in the great 
map of time. We are so dazzled with the gloss and novelty of 
modern discoveries, that we cannot take into our mind's eye the 
vast expanse, the lengthened perspective of human intellect, and 
a cloud hangs over and conceals its loftiest monuments, if they 

30 are removed to a little distance from us — the cloud of our own 
vanity and short-sightedness. The modern sciolist stultifies all 
understanding but his own, and that which he conceives like his 
own. We think, in this age of reason and consummation of 
philosophy, because we knew nothing twenty or thirty years ago, 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 6l 

and began to think then for the first time in our lives, that the 
rest of mankind were in the same predicament, and never knew 
anything till we did ; that the world had grown old in sloth and 
ignorance, had dreamt out its long minority of five thousand 
years in a dozing state, and that it first began to wake out of 5 
sleep, to rouse itself, and look about it, startled by the light of 
our unexpected discoveries, and the noise we made about them. 
Strange error of our infatuated self-love ! Because the clothes 
we remember to have seen worn when we were children, are 
now out of fashion, and our grandmothers were then old women, 10 
we conceive with magnanimous continuity of reasoning, that it 
must have been much worse three hundred years before, and 
that grace, youth, and beauty are things of modern date — as 
if nature had ever been old, or the sun had first shone on our 
folly and presumption. Because, in a word, the last generation, 15 
when tottering off the stage, were not so active, so sprightly, 
and so promising as we were, we begin to imagine, that people 
formerly must have crawled about in a feeble, torpid state, like 
flies in winter, in a sort of dim twilight of the understanding ; 
" nor can we think what thoughts they could conceive," in the 20 
absence of all those topics that so agreeably enliven and diver- 
sify our conversation and literature, mistaking the imperfection of 
our knowledge for the defect of their organs, as if it was neces- 
sary for us to have a register and certificate of their thoughts, 
or as if, because they did not see with our eyes, hear with our 25 
ears, and understand with our understandings, they could hear, 
see, and understand nothing. A falser inference could not be 
drawn, nor one more contrary to the maxims and cautions of a 
wise humanity. " Think," says Shakespear, the prompter of 
good and true feelings, "there 's livers out of Britain." So there 30 
have been thinkers, and great and sound ones, before our time. 
They had the same capacities that we have, sometimes greater 
motives for their exertion, and, for the most part, the same sub- 
ject-matter to work upon. What we learn from nature, we may 



62 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

hope to do as well as they ; what we learn from them, we may 
in general expect to do worse. — What is, I think, as likely as any- 
thing to cure us of this overweening admiration of the present, 
and unmingled contempt for past times, is the looking at the 
5 finest old pictures ; at Raphael's heads, at Titian's faces, at 
Claude's landscapes. We have there the evidence of the senses, 
without the alterations of opinion or disguise of language. We 
there see the blood circulate through the veins (long before it 
was known that it did so), the same red and white " by nature's 

lo own sweet and cunning hand laid on," the same thoughts pass- 
ing through the mind and seated on the lips, the same blue sky, 
and glittering sunny vales, " where Pan, knit with the Graces 
and the Hours in dance, leads on the eternal spring." And we 
begin to feel, that nature and the mind of man are not a thing 

15 of yesterday, as we had been led to suppose; and that " there 
are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our 
philosophy." — Or grant that we improve, in some respects, in a 
uniformly progressive ratio, and build. Babel-high, on the foun- 
dation of other men's knowledge, as in matters of science and 

20 and speculative inquiry, where by going often over the same gen- 
eral ground, certain general conclusions have been arrived at, 
and in the number of persons reasoning on a given subject, truth 
has at last been hit upon and long-established error exploded ; 
yet this does not apply to cases of individual power and knowl- 

25 edge, to a million of things beside, in which we are still to seek 
as much as ever, and in which we can only hope to find, by go- 
ing to the fountain-head of thought and experience. We are 
quite wrong in supposing (as we are apt to do), that we can 
plead an exclusive title to wit and wisdom, to taste and genius, 

30 as the net produce and clear reversion of the age we live in, 
and that all we have to do to be great, is to despise those who 
have gone before us as nothing. 

Or even if we admit a saving clause in this sweeping 
proscription, and do not make the rule absolute, the very 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 63 

nature of the exceptions shows the spirit in which they are made. 
We single out one or two striking instances, say Shakespear or 
Lord Bacon, which we would fain treat as prodigies, and as a 
marked contrast to the rudeness and barbarism that surrounded 
them. These we delight to dwell upon and magnify ; the praise 5 
and wonder we heap upon their shrines, are at the expense of 
the time in which they lived, and would leave it poor indeed. 
We make them out something more than human, " matchless, 
divine, what we will," so to make them no rule for their age, 
and no infringement of the abstract claim to superiority which 10 
we set up. Instead of letting them reflect any lustre, or add any 
credit to the period of history to which they rightfully belong, 
we only make use of their example to insult and degrade it still 
more beneath our own level. 

It is the present fashion to speak with veneration of old 15 
English literature ; but the homage we pay to it is more akin to 
the rites of superstition, than the worship of true religion. Our 
faith is doubtful ; our love cold ; our knowledge little or none. 
We now and then repeat the names of some of the old writers 
by rote ; but we are shy of looking into their works. Though 20 
we seem disposed to think highly of them, and to give them 
every credit for a masculine and original vein of thought, as a 
matter of literary courtesy and enlargement of taste, we are 
afraid of coming to the proof, as too great a trial of our can- 
dour and patience. We regard the enthusiastic admiration of 25 
these obsolete authors, or a desire to make proselytes to a be- 
lief in their extraordinary merits, as an amiable weakness, a 
pleasing delusion ; and prepare to listen to some favourite pas- 
sage, that may be referred to in support of this singular taste, 
with an incredulous smile ; and are in no small pain for the re- 30 
suit of the hazardous experiment ; feeling much the same awk- 
ward condescending disposition to patronise these first crude 
attempts at poetry and lispings of the Muse, as when a fond 
parent brings forward a bashful child to make a display of its wit 



64 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

or learning. We hope the best, put a good face on the matter, 
but are sadly afraid the thing cannot answer. — Dr. Johnson said 
of these writers generally, that " they were sought after because 
they were scarce, and would not have been scarce, had they been 
5 much esteemed." His decision is neither true history nor sound 
criticism. They were esteemed, and they deserved to be so. 

One cause that might be pointed out here, as having contrib- 
uted to the long-continued neglect of our earlier writers, lies in 
the very nature of our academic institutions, which unavoidably 

lo neutralizes a taste for the productions of native genius, estranges 
the mind from the history of our own literature, and makes it in 
each successive age like a book sealed. The Greek and Roman 
classics are a sort of privileged text-books, the standing order 
of the day, in a university education, and leave little leisure for 

15 a competent acquaintance with, or due admiration of, a whole 
host of able writers of our own, who are suffered to moulder in 
obscurity on the shelves of our" libraries, with a decent reserva- 
tion of one or two top-names, that are cried up for form's sake, 
and to save the national character. Thus we keep a few of these 

20 always ready in capitals, and strike off the rest, to prevent the 
tendency to a superfluous population in the republic of letters ; 
in other words, to prevent the writers from becoming more 
numerous than the readers. The ancients are become effete in 
this respect, they no longer increase and multiply ; or if they 

25 have imitators among us, no one is expected to read, and still 
less to admire them. It is not possible that the learned pro- 
fessors and the reading public should clash in this way, or 
necessary for them to use any precautions against each other. 
But it is not the same with the living languages, where there 

30 is danger of being overwhelmed by the crowd of competitors; 
and pedantry has combined with ignorance to cancel their un- 
satisfied claims. 

We affect to wonder at Shakespear and one or two more of 
that period, as solitary instances upon record ; whereas it is our 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 65 

own dearth of information that makes the waste ; for there is 
no time more populous of intellect, or more prolific of intellectual 
wealth, than the one we are speaking of. Shakespear did not 
look upon himself in this light, as a sort of monster of poetical 
genius, or on his contemporaries as " less than the smallest 5 
dwarfs," when he speaks with true, not false modesty, of 
himself and them, and of his wayward thoughts, " desiring this 
man's art, and that man's scope." We fancy that there were 
no such men, that could either add to or take any thing away 
from him, but such there were. He indeed overlooks and 10 
commands the admiration of posterity, but he does it from the 
tablelaiid of the age in which he lived. He towered above his 
fellows, " in shape and gesture proudly eminent ; " but he was 
one of a race of giants, the tallest, the strongest, the most 
graceful, and beautiful of them ; but it was a common and a 1 5 
noble brood. He was not something sacred and aloof from the 
vulgar herd of men, but shook hands with nature and the cir- 
cumstances of the time, and is distinguished from his immediate 
contemporaries, not in kind, but in degree and greater variety 
of excellence. He did not form a class or species by himself, 20 
but belonged to a class or species. His age was necessary to 
him ; nor could he have been wrenched from his place in the 
edifice of which he was so conspicuous a part, without equal 
injury to himself and it. Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, that 
" his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." This cannot be 25 
said with any propriety of Shakespear, who certainly moved in 
a constellation of bright luminaries, and " drew after him a 
third part of the heavens." If we allow, for argument's sake 
(or for truth's, which is better), that he was in himself equal to 
all his competitors put together ; yet there was more dramatic 30 
excellence in that age than in the whole of the period that has 
elapsed since. If his contemporaries, with their united strength, 
would hardly make one Shakespear, certain it is that all his suc- 
cessors would not make half a one. With the exception of a 



66 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

single writer, Otway, and of a single play of his (Venice Pre- 
served), there is nobody in tragedy and dramatic poetry (I do 
not here speak of comedy) to be compared to the great men of 
the age of Shakespear, and immediately after. They are a mighty 
5 phalanx of kindred spirits closing him round, moving in the same 
orbit, and impelled by the same causes in their whirling and 
eccentric career. They had the same faults and the same excel- 
lences ; the same strength and depth and richness, the same 
truth of character, passion, imagination, thought and language, 

lo thrown, heaped, massed together without careful polishing or 
exact method, but poured out in unconcerned profusion from 
the lap of nature and genius in boundless and unrivalled mag- 
nificence. The sweetness of Deckar, the thought of Marston, 
the gravity of Chapman, the grace of Fletcher and his young- 

15 eyed wit, Jonson's learned sock, the flowing vein of Middleton, 
Heywood's ease, the pathos of Webster, and Marlow's deep 
designs, add a double lustre to the sweetness, thought, gravity, 
grace, wit, artless nature, copiousness, ease, pathos, and sublime 
conceptions of Shakespear's Muse. They are indeed the scale 

20 by which we can best ascend to the true knowledge and love of 
him. Our admiration of them does not lessen our relish for him : 
but, on the contrary, increases and confirms it. — ■ For such an 
extraordinary combination and development of fancy and genius 
many causes may be assigned ; and we may seek for the chief of 

25 them in religion, in politics, in the circumstances of the time, the 
recent diffusion of letters, in local situation, and in the character 
of the men who adorned that period, and availed themselves so 
nobly of the advantages placed within their reach. 

I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, 

30 and of the manner in which they operated to mould and stamp 
the poetry of the country at the period of which I have to treat ; 
independently of incidental and fortuitous causes, for which 
there is no accounting, but which, after all, have often the 
greatest share in determining the most important results. 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 6j 

The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general 
effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. 
This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to 
thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumu- 
lated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concus- 5 
sion was general ; but the shock was greatest in this country. 
It toppled down the full-grown, intolerable abuses of centuries at 
a blow ; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigoted faith 
and slavish obedience ; and the roar and dashing of opinions, 
loosened from their accustomed hold, might be heard like the 10 
noise of an angry sea, and has never yet subsided. Germany 
first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the watch- 
word ; but England joined the shout, and echoed it back with 
her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in a 
longer and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius of Great 15 
Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There 
was a mighty fermentation : the waters were out ; public opinion 
was in a state of projection. Liberty was held out to all to think 
and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy ; their spirits stir- 
ring ; their hearts full ; and their hands not idle. Their eyes were 20 
opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with 
curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make 
them free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet 
vice and bloated hypocrisy, loosened their tongues, and made the 
talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she 25 
had beguiled her followers and committed abominations with the 
people, fall harmless from their necks. 

The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great 
work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of 
religion and morality, which had been there locked up as in a 30 
shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, and conveyed 
the lessons of inspired teachers (such they were thought) to the 
meanest of the people. It gave them a common interest in the 
common cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It 



68 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

gave a mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of 
thought and feeling. It cemented their union of character and 
sentiment : it created endless diversity and collision of opinion. 
They found objects to employ their faculties, and a motive in 
5 the magnitude of the consequences attached to them, to exert 
the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the most daring 
intrepidity in maintaining it. Religious controversy sharpens the 
understanding by the subtlety and remoteness of the topics it dis- 
cusses, and braces the will by their infinite importance. We per- 

lo ceive in the history of this period a nervous masculine intellect. 
No levity, no feebleness, no indifference ; or if there were, it is 
a relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone to its 
general character. But there is a gravity approaching to piety ; 
a seriousness of impression, a conscientious severity of argu- 

15 ment, an habitual fervour and enthusiasm in their mode of 
handling almost every subject. The debates of the schoolmen 
were sharp and subtle enough ; but they wanted interest and 
grandeur, and were besides confined to a few : they did not 
affect the general mass of the community. But the Bible was 

20 thrown open to all ranks and conditions " to run and read," 
with its wonderful table of contents from Genesis to the Reve- 
lations. Every village in England would present the scene so 
well described in Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night. I cannot 
think that all this variety and weight of knowledge could be 

25 thrown in all at once upon the mind of a people, and not make 
some impression upon it, the traces of which might be discerned 
in the manners and literature of the age. For to leave more 
disputable points, and take only the historical parts of the Old 
Testament, or the moral sentiments of the New, there is nothing 

30 like them in the power of exciting awe and admiration, or of 
riveting sympathy. We see what Milton has made of the account 
of the Creation, from the manner in which he has treated it, im- 
bued and impregnated with the spirit of the time of which we 
speak. Or what is there equal (in that romantic interest and 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 69 

patriarchal simplicity which goes to the heart of a country, and 
rouses it, as it were, from its lair in wastes and wildernesses) 
to the story of Joseph and his Brethren, of Rachael and Laban, 
of Jacob's Dream, of Ruth and Boaz, the descriptions in the 
book of Job, the deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt, or the 5 
account of their captivity and return from Babylon ? There is 
in all these parts of the Scripture, and numberless more of the 
same kind, to pass over the Orphic hymns of David, the pro- 
phetic denunciations of Isaiah, or the gorgeous visions of Ezekiel, 
an originality, a vastness of conception, a depth and tenderness 10 
of feeling, and a touching simplicity in the mode of narration, 
which he who does not feel, need be made of no " penetrable 
stuff." There is something in the character of Christ too 
(leaving religious faith quite out of the question) of more 
sweetness and majesty, and more likely to work a change in 15 
the mind of man, by the contemplation of its idea alone, than 
any to be found in history, whether actual or feigned. I'his 
character is that of a sublime humanity, such as was never seen 
on earth before, nor since. This shone manifestly both in his 
words and actions. We see it in his washing the disciples' feet 20 
the night before his death, that unspeakable instance of humil- 
ity and love, above all art, all meanness, and all pride, and in the 
leave he took of them on that occasion, " My peace I give 
unto you, that peace which the world cannot give, give I unto 
you;" and in his 'last commandment, that ''they should love 25 
one another." Who can read the account of his behaviour on 
the cross, when turning to his mother he said, " Woman, be- 
hold thy son," and to the disciple John, " Behold thy mother," 
and " from that hour that disciple took her to his own home," 
without having his heart smote within him ! We see it in his 30 
treatment of the woman taken in adultery, and in his excuse for 
the woman who poured precious ointment on his garment as an 
offering of devotion and love, which is here all in all. His religion 
was the religion of the heart. We see it in his discourse with 



70 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

the disciples as they walked together towards Emmaus, when 
their hearts burned within them ; in his sermon from the 
Mount, in his parable of the good Samaritan, and in that of 
the Prodigal Son — in every act and word of his life, a grace, a 
5 mildness, a dignity and love, a patience and wisdom worthy of 
the Son of God. His whole life and being were imbued, steeped 
in this word, charity ; it was the spring, the well-head from which 
every thought and feeling gushed into act ; and it was this that 
breathed a mild glory from his face in that last agony upon the 

lo cross," when the meek Saviour bowed his head and died," pray- 
ing for his enemies. He was the first true teacher of morality ; 
for he alone conceived the idea of a pure humanity. He re- 
deemed man from the worship of that idol, self, and instructed 
him by precept and example to love his neighbour as himself, 

15 to forgive our enemies, to do good to those that curse us and 
despitefully use us. He taught the love of good for the sake 
of good, without regard to personal or sinister views, and made 
the affections of the heart the sole seat of morality, instead of 
the pride of the understanding or the sternness of the will. 

20 In answering the question, " Who is our neighbour ? " as one 
who stands in need of our assistance, and whose wounds we 
can bind up, he has done more to humanize the thoughts and 
tame the unruly passions, than all who have tried to reform and 
benefit mankind. The very idea of abstract benevolence, of the 

25 desire to do good because another wants our services, and of 
regarding the human race as one family, the offspring of one 
common parent, is hardly to be found in any other code or 
system. It was " to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the 
Greeks foolishness." The Greeks and Romans never thought 

30 of considering others, but as they were Greeks or Romans, as 
they were bound to them by certain positive ties, or, on the 
other hand, as separated from them by fiercer antipathies. 
Their virtues were the virtues of political machines, their vices 
were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to endure pain 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 7 1 

with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. But in 
the Christian religion, " we perceive a softness coming over the 
heart of a nation, and the iron scales that fence and harden it, 
melt and drop off." It becomes malleable, capable of pity, of 
forgiveness, of relaxing in its claims, and remitting its power, s 
We strike it, and it does not hurt us : it is not steel or marble, 
but flesh and blood, clay tempered with tears, and " soft as 
sinews of the new-born babe." The gospel was first preached 
to the poor, for it consulted their wants and interests, not its 
own pride and arrogance. It first promulgated the equality lo 
of mankind in the community of duties and benefits. It de- 
nounced the iniquities of the chief Priests and Pharisees, and 
declared itself at variance with principalities and powers, for 
it sympathizes not with the oppressor, but the oppressed. It 
first abolished slavery, for it did not consider the power of 15 
the will to inflict injury, as clothing it with a right to do so. Its 
law is good, not power. It at the same time tended to wean 
the mind from the grossness of sense, and a particle of its divine 
flame was lent to brighten and purify the lamp of love ! 

There have been persons who, being sceptics as to the divine 20 
mission of Christ, having taken an unaccountable prejudice to 
his doctrines, and have been disposed to deny the merit of his 
character ; but this was not the feeling of the great men in the 
age of Elizabeth (whatever might be their belief) one of whom 
says of him, with a boldness equal to its piety : 25 

" The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer; 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ; 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed." 

This was old honest Deckar, and the lines ought to embalm 30 
his memory to every one who has a sense either of religion, or 
philosophy, or humanity, or true genius. Nor can I help think- 
ing, that we may discern the traces of the influence exerted by 
religious faith in the spirit of the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, 



72 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

in the means of exciting terror and pity, in the delineation of 
the passions of grief, remorse, love, sympathy, the sense of 
shame, in the fond desires, the longings after immortality, in 
the heaven of hope and the abyss of despair it lays open to us.-' 
5 The literature of this age, then, I would say, was strongly in- 
fluenced (among other causes), first by the spirit of Christianity, 
and secondly by the spirit of Protestantism. 

The effects of the Reformation on politics and philosophy 
may be seen in the writings and history of the next and of the 

10 following ages. They are still at work, and will continue to be 
so. The effects on the poetry of the time were chiefly confined 
to the moulding of the character, and giving a powerful impulse 
to the intellect of the country. The immediate use or application 
that was made of religion to subjects of imagination and fiction 

15 was not (from an obvious ground of separation) so direct or 
frequent, as that which was made of the classical and romantic 
literature. 

For much about the same time, the rich and fascinating stores 
of the Greek and Roman mythology, and those of the romantic 

20 poetry of Spain and Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious, 
and thrown open in translations to the admiring gaze of the 
vulgar. This last circumstance could hardly have afforded so 
much advantage to the poets of that day, who were themselves, 
in fact, the translators, as it shews the general curiosity and in- 

25 creasing interest in such subjects as a prevailing feature of the 
times. There were translations of Tasso by Fairfax, and of 
Ariosto by Harrington, of Homer and Hesiod by Chapman, 
and of Virgil long before, and Ovid soon after ; there was Sir 
Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, of which Shakespear 

30 has made such admirable use in his Coriolanus and Julius 
Caesar ; and Ben Jonson's tragedies of Catiline and Sejanus 
may themselves be considered as almost literal translations 

1 In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied the place of the 
translation of the Bible : and this dumb art arose in the silence of the written oracles. 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 73 

into verse of Tacitus, Sallust, and Cicero's Orations in his 
consulship. Boccaccio, the divine Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, 
the satirist Aretine, Machiavel, Castiglione, and others were fa- 
miliar to our writers, and they make occasional mention of some 
few French authors, as Ronsard and Du Bartas ; for the French 5 
literature had not at this stage arrived at its Augustan period, 
and it was the imitation of their literature a century afterwards, 
when it had arrived at its greatest height (itself copied from the 
Greek and Latin), that enfeebled and impoverished our own. 
But of the time that we are considering, it might be said, with- 10 
out much extravagance, that every breath that blew, that every 
wave that rolled to our shores, brought with it some accession 
to our knowledge, which was engrafted on the national genius. 
In fact, all the disposeable materials that had been accumulating 
for a long period of time, either in our own or in foreign coun- 15 
tries, were now brought together, and required nothing more 
than to be wrought up, polished, or arranged in striking forms, 
for ornament and use. To this every inducement prompted, 
the novelty of the acquisition of knowledge in many cases, the 
emulation of foreign wits and of immortal works, the want and 20 
the expectation of such works among ourselves, the opportunity 
and encouragement afforded for their production by leisure and 
affluence ; and, above all, the insatiable desire of the mind to 
beget its own image, and to (^onstruct out of itself, and for the 
delight and admiration of the world and posterity, that excel- 25 
lence of which the idea exists hitherto only in its own breast, 
and the impression of which it v/ould make as universal as the 
eye of heaven, the benefit as common as the air we breathe. 
The first impulse of genius is to create what never existed be- 
fore : the contemplation of that which is so created is sufficient 30 
to satisfy the demands of taste ; and it is the habitual study and 
imitation of the original models that takes away the power, and 
even wish to do the like. Taste limps after genius, and from 
copying the artificial models we lose sight of the living principle 



74 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

of nature. It is the effort we make, and the impulse we acquire, 
in overcoming the first obstacles, that projects us forward ; it 
is the necessity for exertion that makes us conscious of our 
strength ; but this necessity and this impulse once removed, the 
5 tide of fancy and enthusiasm, which is at first a running stream, 
soon settles and crusts into the standing pool of dulness, criti- 
cism, and viiiii. 

What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of man at 
this period was the discovery of the New World, and the reading 

10 of voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed 
to arise, as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery 
waste, and invite the cupidity or wing the imagination of the 
dreaming speculator. Fairyland was realized in new and un- 
known worlds. " Fortunate fields and groves and flowery vales, 

IS thrice happy isles," were found floating, " like those Hesperian 
gardens famed of old," beyond Atlantic seas, as dropped from 
the zenith. The people, the soil, the clime, everything gave un- 
limited scope to the curiosity of the traveller and reader. Other 
manners might be said to enlarge the bounds of knowledge, and 

20 new mines of wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is from a 
voyage to the Straits of Magellan that Shakespear has taken 
the hint of Prospero's Enchanted Island, and of the savage 
Caliban with his god Setebos.^ Spenser seems to have had the 
same feeling in his mind in the production of his Faery Queen, 

25 and vindicates his poetic fiction on this very ground of analogy. 

" Right well I wote, most mighty sovereign, 
That all this famous antique history 
Of some the abundance of an idle brain 
Will judged be, and painted forgery, 
30 Rather than matter of just memory : 

Since none that breatheth living air, doth know 
Where is that happy land of faery 
Which I so much do vaunt, but nowhere show, 
But vouch antiquities, which nobody can know. 

1 See a Voyage to the Straits of Magellan, 1594. 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 75 

But let that man with better sense avise, 
That of the world least part to us is read : 
And daily how through hardy enterprize 
. Many great regions are discovered, 

Which to late age were never mentioned. 5 

Who ever heard of th' Indian Peru ? 
Or who in venturous vessel measured 
The Amazons' huge river, now found true ? 
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did ever view ? 

Yet all these were when no man did them know, 10 

Yet have from wisest ages hidden been : 
And later times things more unknown shall show. 
Why then should witless man so much misween 
That nothing is but that which he hath seen ? 

What if within the moon's fair shining sphere, 15 

W^hat if in every other star unseen, 
Of other worlds he happily should hear, 
He wonder would much more ; yet such to some appear." 

Fancy's air-drawn pictures after history's waking dream 
shewed like clouds over mountains : and from the romance of 20 
real life to the idlest fiction, the transition seemed easy. Shake- 
spear, as well as others of his time, availed himself of the old 
Chronicles, and of the traditions or fabulous inventions contained 
in them in such ample measure, and which had not yet been 
appropriated to the purposes of poetry or the drama. The stage 25 
was a new thing ; and those who had to supply its demands laid 
their hands upon whatever came within their reach : they were 
not particular as to the means, so that they gained the end. 
Lear is founded on an old ballad ; Othello on an Italian novel ; 
Hamlet on a Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch tradition : one 30 
of which is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the last in 
Hollingshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in each, are 
authenticated in the old Gothic history. There was also this 
connecting link between the poetry of this age and the super- 
natural traditions of a former one, that the belief in them was 35 
still extant, and in full force and visible operation among the 



'j6 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

vulgar (to say no more) in the time of our authors. The ap- 
palling and wild chimeras of superstition and ignorance, " those 
bodiless creations ecstacy is very cunning in," were inwoven with 
existing manners and opinions, and all their effects on the pas- 
5 sions and terror or pity might be gathered from common and 
actual observation — might be discerned in the workings of the 
face, the expressions of the tongue, the writhings of a troubled 
conscience. " Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men 
may read strange matters." Midnight and secret murders too, 

lo from the imperfect state of the police, were more common; and 
the ferocious and brutal manners that would stamp the brow 
of the hardened ruffian or hired assassin, more incorrigible 
and undisguised. The portraits of Tyrrel and Forrest were, no 
doubt, done from the life. We find that the ravages of the 

15 plague, the destructive rage of fire, the poisoned chalice, lean 
famine, the serpent's mortal sting, and the fury of wild beasts, 
were the common topics of their poetry, as they were common 
occurrences in more remote periods of history. They were the 
strong ingredients thrown into the cauldron of tragedy, to make 

20 it " thick and slab." Man's life was (as it appears to me) more 
full of traps and pitfalls ; of hair-breadth accidents by fiood and 
field ; more way-laid by sudden and startling evils ; it trod on 
the brink of hope and fear ; stumbled upon fate unawares ; 
while the imagination, close behind it, caught at and clung to 

25 the shape of danger, or " snatched a wild and fearful joy from 
its escape." The accidents of nature were less provided against ; 
the excesses of the passions and of lawless power were less 
regulated, and produced more strange and desperate catastro- 
phes. The tales of Boccaccio are founded on the great pestilence 

30 of Florence, Fletcher the poet died of the plague, and Marlow 
was stabbed in a tavern quarrel. The strict authority of parents, 
the inequality of ranks, or the hereditary feuds between different 
families, made more unhappy loves or matches. 

" The course of true love never did run even." 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 'jy 

Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in our 
elder writers, was yet in considerable activity in the reign of 
Elizabeth. " The age of chivalry was not then quite gone, nor 
the glory of Europe extinguished for ever." Jousts and tourna- 
ments were still common with the nobility in England and in 5 
foreign countries : Sir Philip Sidney was particularly distin- 
guished for his proficiency in these exercises (and indeed fell a 
martyr to his ambition as a soldier) — and the gentle Surrey 
was still more famous, on the same account, just before him. 
It is true, the general use of firearms gradually superseded the 10 
necessity of skill in the sword, or bravery in the person : and 
as a symptom of the rapid degeneracy in this respect, we find 
Sir John Suckling soon after boasting of himself as one — 

" Who prized black eyes, and a lucky hit 
At bowls, above all the trophies of wit." 15 

It was comparatively an age of peace, 

" Like strength reposing on his own right arm ; " 

but the sound of civil combat might still be heard in the distance, 
the spear glittered to the eye of memory, or the clashing of ar- 
mour struck on the imagination of the ardent and the young. 20 
They were borderers on the savage state, on the times of war 
and bigotry, though in the lap of arts, of luxury, and knowledge. 
They stood on the shore and saw the billows rolling after the 
storm : " they heard the tumult, and were still." The manners 
and out-of-door amusements were more tinctured with a spirit 25 
of adventure and romance. The war with wild beasts, &c., was 
more strenuously kept up in country sports. I do not think 
we could get from sedentary poets, who had never mingled in 
the vicissitudes, the dangers, or excitements of the chase, such 
descriptions of hunting and other athletic games, as are to be 30 
found in Shakespear's Midsummer Night's Dream, or Fletcher's 
Noble Kinsmen. 



78 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

With respect to the good cheer and hospitable living of those 
times, I cannot agree with an ingenious and agreeable writer of 
the present day, that it was general or frequent. The very stress 
laid upon certain holidays and festivals, shews that they did not 
5 keep up the same Saturnalian licence and open house all the 
year round. They reserved themselves for great occasions, and 
made the best amends they could, for a year of abstinence and 
toil by a week of merriment and convivial indulgence. Persons 
in middle life at this day, who can afford a good dinner every 

10 day, do not look forward to it as any particular subject of exul- 
tation : the poor peasant, who can only contrive to treat himself 
to a joint of meat on a Sunday, considers it as an event in the 
week. So, in the old (Cambridge comedy of the Returne from 
Parnassus, we find this indignant description of the progress of 

15 luxury in those days, put into the mouth of one of the speakers. 

" Why is't not strange to see a ragged clerke. 
Some stammell weaver, or some butcher's sonne, 
That scrubb'd a late within a sleeveless gowne. 
When the commencement, like a morrice dance, 

20 I lath put a bell or two about his legges, 

Created him a sweet cleane gentleman : 
How then he 'gins to follow fashions. 
lie whose thin sire dwelt in a smokye roofe, 
Must take tobacco, and must wear a locke, 

25 His thirsty dad drinkes in a wooden bowle, 

But his sweet self is served in silver plate. 
His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legges 
For one good Christmas meal on new year's day, 
But his mawe must be capon cramm'd each day." 

Act III. Scene 2 

30 This does not look as if in those days " it snowed of meat 
and drink," as a matter of course, throughout the year! — The 
distinctions of dress, the badges of different professions, the very 
signs of the shops, which we have set aside for written inscrip- 
tions over the doors, were, as Mr. Lamb observes, a sort of 

35 visible language to the imagination, and hints for thought. Like 



ON KLIZAr3ETIIAN LITERATURE 79 

the costume of different foreign nations, they had an immediate 
striking and picturesque effect, giving scope to the fancy. The 
surface of society was embossed with hieroglyphics, and poetry 
existed '' in act and complement extern." The poetry of former 
times might be directly taken from real life, as our poetry is taken 5 
from the poetry of former times. Finally, the face of nature, 
which was the same glorious object then that it is now, was 
open to them ; and coming first, they gathered her fairest flowers 
t(j live for ever in their verse : — the movements of the human 
heart were not hid from them, for they had the same passions 10 
as we, only less disguised, and less subject to controul. Deckar 
has given an admirable description of a mad-house in one of 
his plays. But it might be perhaps objected, that it was only a 
literal account taken from Bedlam at that time : and it might be 
answered, that the old poets took the same method of describ- 15 
ing the passions and fancies of men whom they met at large, 
which forms the point of communion between us : for the title 
of the old play, "A Mad World, my Masters," is hardly yet ob- 
solete ; and we are pretty much the same Bedlam still, perhaps 
a little better managed, like the real one, and with more care' 20 
and humanity shewn to the patients ! 

Lastly, to conclude this account ; What gave a unity and 
common direction to all these causes, was the natural genius 
of the country, which was strong in these writers in proportion 
to their strength. We are a nation of islanders, and we cannot 25 
help it ; nor mend ourselves if we would. We are something 
in ourselves, nothing when we try to ape others. Music and 
painting are not our forte ; for what we have done in that way 
has been little, and that borrowed from others with great diffi- 
culty. But we may boast of our poets and philosophers. That's 30 
something. We have had strong heads and sound hearts among 
us. Thrown on one side of the world, and left to bustle for our- 
selves, we have fought out many a battle for truth and freedom. 
That is (Hir natural style ; and it were to be wished we had in 



8o SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

no instance departed from it. Our situation has given us a cer- 
tain cast of thought and character, and our liberty has enabled 
us to make the most of it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded 
into every fashion, v^^ith stubborn joints not easily bent. We are 
5 slow to think, and therefore impressions do not w^ork upon us 
till they act in masses. We are not forward to express our feel- 
ings, and therefore they do not come from us till they force 
their way in the most impetuous eloquence. Our language is, 
as it were, to begin anew, and we make use of the most singu- 

lo lar and boldest combinations to explain ourselves. Our wit 
comes from us, " like birdlime, brains and all." We pay too little 
attention to form and method, leave our works in an unfinished 
state, but still the materials we work in are solid and of nature's 
mint ; we do not deal in counterfeits. We both under and over- 

15 do, but we keep an eye to the prominent features, the main 
chance. We are more for weight than show ; care only about 
what interests ourselves, instead of trying to impose upon 
others by plausible appearances, and are obstinate and intrac- 
table in not conforming to common rules, by which many arrive 

20 at their ends with half the real waste of thought and trouble. 
We neglect all but the principal object, gather our force to 
make a great blow, bring it down, and relapse into sluggishness 
and indifference again. Materiam snperabat opus, cannot be 
said of us. We may be accused of grossness, but not of flimsi- 

25 ness; of extravagance, but not of affectation; of want of art and 
refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. Our litera- 
ture, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque ; unequal and irregular ; 
not cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform texture, but 
of great weight in the whole, and of incomparable value in the 

30 best parts. It aims at an excess of beauty or power, hits or 
misses, and is either very good indeed, or absolutely good for 
nothing. This character applies in particular to our literature 
in the age of Elizabeth, which is its best period, before the in- 
troduction of a rage for French rules and French models ; for 



ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 8 1 

whatever may be the value of our own original style of compo- 
sition, there can be neither offence nor presumption in saying, 
that it is at least better than our second-hand imitations of 
others. Our understanding (such as it is, and must remain to 
be good for any thing) is not a thoroughfare for common places, 5 
smooth as the palm of one's hand, but full of knotty points and 
jutting excrescences, rough, uneven, overgrown with brambles ; 
and I like this aspect of the mind (as some one said of the coun- 
try), where nature keeps a good deal of the soil in her own 
hands. Perhaps the genius of our poetry has more of Pan than 10 
of Apollo ; " but Pan is a God, Apollo is no more ! " 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 

" There is a pleasure in painting which none but painters 
know." In writing, you have to contend with the world ; in 
painting, you have only to carry on a friendly strife with Nature. 
You sit down to your task, and are happy. From the moment 
5 that you take up the pencil, and look Nature in the face, you 
are at peace with your own heart. No angry passions rise to 
disturb the silent progress of the work, to shake the hand, or 
dim the brow : no irritable humours are set afloat : you have no 
absurd opinions to combat, no point to strain, no adversary to 

lo crush, no fool to annoy — you are actuated by fear or favour to 
no man. There is " no juggling here," no sophistry, no intrigue, 
no tampering with the evidence, no attempt to make black white, 
or white black : but you resign yourself into the hands of a 
greater power, that of Nature, with the simplicity of a child, and 

15 the devotion of an enthusiast — ''study with joy her manner, 
and with rapture taste her style." The mind is calm, and full at 
the same time. The hand and eye are equally employed. In 
tracing the commonest object, a plant or the stump of a tree, 
you learn something every moment. You perceive unexpected 

20 differences, and discover likenesses where you looked for no such 
thing. You try to set down what you see — find out your error, 
and correct it. You need not play tricks, or purposely mistake : 
with all your pains, you are still far short of the mark. Patience 
grows out of the endless pursuit, and turns it into a luxury. A 

25 streak in a flower, a wrinkle in a leaf, a tinge in a cloud, a stain 
in an old wall or ruin grey, are seized with avidity as the spolia 
opima of this sort of mental warfare, and furnish out labour for 
another half-day. The hours pass away untold, without chagrin, 

82 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 83 

and without weariness ; nor would you ever wish to pass them 
otherwise. Innocence is joined with industry, pleasure with 
business ; and the mind is satisfied, though it is not engaged in 
thinking or in doing any mischief.^ 

I have not much pleasure in writing these Essays, or in read- 5 
ing them afterwards ; though I own I now and then meet with 
a phrase that I like, or a thought that strikes me as a true one. 
But after I begin them, I am only anxious to get to the end of 
them, which I am not sure I shall do, for I seldom see my way 
a page or even a sentence beforehand ; and when I have as by 10 
a miracle escaped, I trouble myself little more about them. I 
sometimes have to write them twice over : then it is necessary 
to read the proof, to prevent mistakes by the printer ; so that by 
the time they appear in a tangible shape, and one can con them 
over with a conscious, sidelong glance to the public approbation, 1 5 
they have lost their gloss and relish, and become " more tedious 
than a twice-told tale." For a person to read his own works over 
with any great delight, he ought first to forget that he ever 
wrote them. Familiarity naturally breeds contempt. It is, in fact, 
like poring fondly over a piece of blank paper : from repetition, 20 

1 There is a passage in Werter which contains a very pleasing illustration of 
this doctrine, and is as follows. 

" About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. 1 1 is very agreeably situated 
on the side of a hill : from one of the paths which leads out of the village, you have a view 
of the whole country ; and there is a good old viroman who sells wine, coffee, and tea 
there : but better than all this are two lime-trees before the church, which spread their 
branches over a little green, surrounded by bams and cottages. I have seen few places 
more retired and peaceful. I send for a chair and table from the old woman's, and there 
I drink my coffee and read Homer. It was by accident that I discovered this place one 
fine afternoon : all was perfect stillness ; every body was in the fields, except a little boy 
about four years old, who was sitting on the ground, and holding between his knees a child 
of about six months ; he pressed it to his bosom with his little arms, which made a sort 
of great chair for it ; and notwithstanding the vivacity which sparkled in his eyes, he sat 
perfectly still. Quite delighted with the scene, I sat down on a plough opposite, and had 
great pleasure in drawing this little picture of brotherly tenderness. I added a bit of the 
hedge, the barn-door, and some broken cart-wheels, without any order, just as they hap- 
pened to lie ; and in about an hour I found I had made a drawing of great expression and 
very correct design, without having put in any thing of my own. This confirmed me in the 
resolution I had made before, only to copy nature for the future. Nature is inexhaustible, 
and alone forms the greatest masters. Say what you will of rules, they alter the true fea- 
tures, and the natural expression." Page 15. 



84 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

the words convey no distinct meaning to the mind, are mere idle 
sounds, except that our vanity claims an interest and property in 
them. I have more satisfaction in my own thoughts than in 
dictating them to others : words are necessary to explain the 
5 impression of certain things upon me to the reader, but they 
rather weaken and draw a veil over than strengthen it to myself. 
However I might say with the poet, " My mind to me a king- 
dom is," yet I have little ambition " to set a throne or chair of 
state in the understandings of other men." The ideas we cherish 
lo most, exist best in a kind of shadowy abstraction, 

" Pure in the last recesses of the mind ; " 

and derive neither force nor interest from being exposed to pub- 
lic view. They are old familiar acquaintance, and any change 
in them, arising from the adventitious ornaments of style or 

15 dress, is little to their advantage. After I have once written on 
a subject, it goes out of my mind : my feelings about it have 
been melted down into words, and them I forget. I have, as it 
were, discharged my memory of its old habitual reckoning, and 
rubbed out the score of real sentiment. For the future, it exists 

20 only for the sake of others. — But I cannot say, from my own ex- 
perience, that the same process takes place in transferring our 
ideas to canvas ; they gain more than they lose in the mechani- 
cal transformation. One is never tired of painting, because you 
have to set down not what you knew already, but what you 

25 have just discovered. In the former case, you translate feelings 
into words ; in the latter, names into things. There is a continual 
creation out of nothing going on. With every stroke of the 
brush, a new field of inquiry is laid open ; new difficulties arise, 
and new triumphs are prepared over them. By comparing the 

30 imitation with the original, you see what you have done, and 
how much you have still to do. The test of the senses is severer 
than that of fancy, and an over-match even for the delusions of 
our self-love. One part of a picture shames another, and you 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 85 

determine to paint up to yourself, if you cannot come up to na- 
ture. Every object becomes lustrous from the light thrown back 
upon it by the mirror of art : and by the aid of the pencil we may 
be said to touch and handle the objects of sight. The air-drawn 
visions that hover on the verge of existence have a bodily pres- 5 
ence given them on the canvas : the form of beauty is changed 
into substance : the dream and the glory of the universe is made 
"palpable to feeling as to sight." — And see! a rainbow starts 
from the canvas, with all its humid train of glory, as if it were 
drawn from its cloudy arch in heaven. The spangled landscape 10 
glitters with drops of dew after the shower. The "fleecy fools" 
show their coats in the gleams of the setting sun. The shepherds 
pipe their farewell notes in the fresh evening air. And is this 
bright vision made from a dead dull blank, like a bubble reflect- 
ing the mighty fabric of the universe ? Who would think this 1 5 
miracle of Rubens's pencil possible to be performed ? Who, 
having seen it, would not spend his life to do the like ? See how 
the rich fallows, the bare stubble-field, the scanty harvest-home, 
drag in Rembrandt's landscapes ! How often have I looked at 
them and nature, and tried to do the same, till the very " light 20 
thickened," and there was an earthiness in the feeling of the 
air ! There is no end of the refinements of art and nature in 
this respect. One may look at the misty glimmering horizon 
till the eye dazzles and the imagination is lost, in hopes to 
transfer the whole interminable expanse at one blow upon the 25 
canvas. Wilson said, he used to try to paint the effect of the 
motes dancing in the setting sun. At another time, a friend 
coming into his painting-room when he was sitting on the ground 
in a melancholy posture, observed that his picture looked like a 
landscape after a shower : he started up with the greatest delight, 30 
and said, " That is the effect I intended to produce, but thought 
I had failed." Wilson was neglected ; and, by degrees, neglected 
his art to apply himself to brandy. His hand became unsteady, 
so that it was only by repeated attempts that he could reach 



86 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

the place, or produce the effect he aimed at ; and when he had 
done a little to a picture, he would say to any acquaintance who 
chanced to drop in, " I have painted enough for one day : come, 
let us go somewhere." It was not so Claude left his pictures, 
5 or his studies on the banks of the Tiber, to go in search of other 
enjoyments, or ceased to gaze upon the glittering sunny vales 
and distant hills ; and while his eye drank in the clear sparkling 
hues and lovely forms of nature, his hand stamped them on 
the lucid canvas to last there for ever ! — One of the most de- 

10 lightful parts of my life was one fine summer, when I used to 
walk out of an evening to catch the last light of the sun, gem- 
ming the green slopes or russet lawns, and gilding tower or 
tree, while the blue sky gradually turning to purple and gold, 
or skirted with dusky grey, hung its broad marble pavement 

15 over all, as we see it in the great master of Italian landscape. 
But to come to more particular explanation of the subject. 

The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman with 
the upper part of the face shaded by her bonnet, and I certainly 
laboured it with great perseverance. It took me numberless sit- 

20 tings to do it. I have it by me still, and sometimes look at it 
with surprise, to think how much pains were thrown away to 
little purpose, — yet not altogether in vain if it taught me to see 
good in every thing, and to know that there is nothing vulgar in 
nature seen with the eye of science or of true art. Refinement 

25 creates beauty everywhere : it is the grossness of the spectator 
that discovers nothing but grossness in the object. Be this as 
it may, I spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I 
thought that life was so too at that moment. I got in the gen- 
eral effect the first day ; and pleased and surprised enough I 

30 was at my success. The rest was a work of time — of weeks 
and months (if need were) of patient toil and careful finishing. 
I had seen an old head by Rembrandt at Burleigh-House, and if 
I could produce a head at all like Rembrandt in a year, in my 
life time, it would be glory and felicity and wealth and fame 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 8/ 

enough for me ! The head I had seen at Burleigh was an exact 
and wonderful fac-simile of nature, and I resolved to make mine 
(as nearly as I could) an exact fac-simile of nature. I did not 
then, nor do I now believe, with Sir Joshua, that the perfection 
of art consists in giving general appearances without individual 5 
details, but in giving general appearances with individual details. 
Otherwise, I had done my work the first day. But I saw some- 
thing more in nature than general effect, and I thought it worth 
my while to give it in the picture. There was a gorgeous effect 
of light and shade : but there was a delicacy as well as depth in 10 
the chiaro scuro, which I was bound to follow into all its dim and 
scarce perceptible variety of tone and shadow. Then I had to 
make the transition from a strong light to as dark a shade, pre- 
serving the masses, but gradually softening off the intermediate 
parts. It was so in nature : the difficulty was to make it so in 15 
the copy. I tried, and failed again and again ; I strove harder, 
and succeeded as I thought. The wrinkles in Rembrandt were 
not hard lines ; but broken and irregular. I saw the same appear- 
ance in nature, and strained every nerve to give it. If I could 
hit off this edgy appearance, and insert the reflected light in the 20 
furrows of old age in half a morning, I did not think I had lost 
a day. Beneath the shrivelled yellow parchment look of the 
skin there was here and there a streak of the blood colour ting- 
ing the face ; this I made a point of conveying, and did not 
cease to compare what I saw with what I did (with jealous lynx- 25 
eyed watchfulness) till I succeeded to the best of my ability and 
judgment. How many revisions were there ! How many attempts 
to catch an expression which I had seen the day before ! How 
often did we try to get the old position, and wait for the return 
of the same light ! There was a puckering up of the lips, a 30 
cautious introversion of the eye under the shadow of the bon- 
net, indicative of the feebleness and suspicion of old age, which 
at last we managed, after many trials and some quarrels, to a 
tolerable nicety. The picture was never finished, and I might 



88 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

have gone on with it to the present hour.^ I used to set it on 
the ground when my day's work was done, and saw revealed to 
me with swimming eyes the birth of new hopes, and of a new 
world of objects. The painter thus learns to look at nature with 
5 different eyes. He before saw her "as in a glass darkly, but 
now face to face." He understands the texture and meaning 
of the visible universe, and " sees into the life of things," not 
by the help of mechanical instruments, but of the improved 
exercise of his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with nature, 

10 The meanest thing is not lost upon him, for he looks at it with 
an eye to itself, not merely to his own vanity or interest, or the 
opinion of the world. Even where there is neither beauty nor 
use — if that ever were — still there is truth, and a sufficient 
source of gratification in the indulgence of curiosity and activity 

1 5 of mind. The humblest painter is a true scholar ; and the best 
of scholars — the scholar of nature. For myself, and for the 
real comfort and satisfaction of the thing, I had rather have been 
Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow, than the greatest casuist or philologer 
that ever lived. The painter does not view things in clouds or 

^o " mist, the common gloss of theologians," but applies the same 
standard of truth and disinterested spirit of inquiry, that influence 
his daily practice to other subjects. He perceives form, he dis- 
tinguishes character. He reads men and books with an intuitive 
eye. He is a critic as well as a connoisseur. The conclusions 

25 he draws are clear and convincing, because they are taken from 
the things themselves. He is not a fanatic, a dupe, or a slave : 
for the habit of seeing for himself also disposes him to judge 
for himself. The most sensible men I know (taken as a class) 
are painters ; that is, they are the most lively observers of what 

30 passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of 
what passes in their own minds. From their profession they in 

1 It is at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish (the perish- 
able vehicle of the English school), like an envelope of gold-beaters' skin, so as 
to be hardly visible. 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 89 

general mix more with the world than authors ; and if they 
have not the same fund of acquired knowledge, are obliged to 
rely more on individual sagacity. I might mention the names 
of Opie, Fuseli, Northcote, as persons distinguished for striking 
description and acquaintance with the subtle traits of character.^ 5 
Painters in ordinary society, or in obscure situations where their 
value is not known, and they are treated with neglect and indif- 
ference, have sometimes a forward self-sufficiency of manner : 
but this is not so much their fault as that of others. Perhaps 
their want of regular education may also be in fault in such 10 
cases. Richardson, who is very tenacious of the respect in which 
the profession ought to be held, tells a story of Michael Angelo, 
that after a quarrel between him and Pope Julius II. " upon 
account of a slight the artist conceived the pontiff had put upon 
him, Michael Angelo was introduced by a bishop, who, thinking 1 5 
to serve the artist by it, made it an argument that the Pope 
should be reconciled to him, because men of his profession were 
commonly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise : his holi- 
ness, enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and told 
him, it was he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man 20 
himself would not offend ; the prelate was driven out of the 
chamber, and Michael Angelo had the Pope's benediction ac- 
companied with presents. This bishop had fallen into the vul- 
gar error, and was rebuked accordingly." 

Besides the exercise of the mind, painting exercises the body. 25 
It is a mechanical as well as a liberal art. To do anything, to 
dig a hole in the ground, to plant a cabbage, to hit a mark, 
to move a shuttle, to work a pattern, — in a word, to attempt 
to produce any effect, and to succeed^ has something in it that 

1 Men in business, who are answerable with their fortunes for the conse- 
quences of their opinions, and are therefore accustomed to ascertain pretty accu- 
rately the grounds on which they act, before they commit themselves on the 
event, are often men of remarkably quick and sound judgments. Artists in like 
manner must know tolerably well what they are about, before they can bring the 
result of their observations to the test of ocular demonstration. 



90 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

gratifies the love of power, and carries off the restless activity 
of the mind of man. Indolence is a delightful but distressing 
state : we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no 
less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the 

5 human frame ; and painting combines them both incessantly.-" 
The hand furnishes a practical test of the correctness of the 
eye ; and the eye thus admonished, imposes fresh tasks of skill 
and industry upon the hand. Every stroke tells, as the verify- 
ing of a new truth ; and every new observation, the instant it is 

lo made, passes into an act and emanation of the will. Every step 
is nearer what we wish, and yet there is always more to do. In 
spite of the facility, the fluttering grace, the evanescent hues, 
that play round the pencil of Rubens and Vandyke, however I 
may admire, I do not envy them this power so much as I do 

15 the slow, patient, laborious execution of Correggio, Leonardo 
da Vinci, and Andrea del Sarto, where every touch appears 
conscious of its charge, emulous of truth, and where the painful 
artist has so distinctly wrought, 

" That you might almost say his picture thought ! " 

20 In the one case, the colours seemed breathed on the canvas 
as if by magic, the work and the wonder of a moment : in the 
other, they seem inlaid in the body of the work, and as if it 
took the artist years of unremitting labour, and of delightful 
never-ending progress to perfection." Who would wish ever to 

25 come to the close of such works, — not to dwell on them, to 
return to them, to be wedded to them to the last ? Rubens, 
with his florid, rapid style, complained that when he had just 
learned his art, he should be forced to die. Leonardo, in the 
slow advances of his, had lived long enough ! 

1 The famous Schiller used to say, that he found the great happiness of life, 
after all, to consist in the discharge of some mechanical duty. 

2 The rich impasting of Titian and Giorgione combines something of the 
advantages of both these styles, the felicity of the one with the carefulness of the 
other, and is perhaps to be preferred to either. 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 91 

Painting is not, like writing, what is properly understood by 
a sedentary employment. It requires not indeed a strong, but 
a continued and steady exertion of muscular power. The preci- 
sion and delicacy of the manual operation, makes up for the 
want of vehemence, — as to balance himself for any time in the 5 
same position the rope-dancer must strain every nerve. Painting 
for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's 
dinner, as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over 
Banstead Downs. It is related of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that 
" he took no other exercise than what he used in his painting- 10 
room," — the writer means, in walking backwards and forwards 
to look at his picture ; but the act of painting itself, of laying on 
the colours in the proper place, and proper quantity, was a much 
harder exercise than this alternate receding from and returning 
to the picture. This last would be rather a relaxation and relief 15 
than an effort. It is not to be wondered at, that an artist like 
Sir Joshua, who delighted so much in the sensual and practical 
part of his art, should have found himself at a considerable 
loss when the decay of his sight precluded him, for the last 
year or two of his life, from the following up of his profession, 20 
— " the source," according to his own remark, " of thirty years 
uninterrupted enjoyment and prosperity to him." It is only 
those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed 
themselves to brood incessantly on abstract ideas, that never 
feel e/iniii. 25 

To give one instance more, and then I will have done with 
this rambling discourse. One of my first attempts was a picture 
of my father, who was then in a green old age, with strong- 
marked features, and scarred with the small-pox. I drew it out 
with a broad light crossing the face, looking down, with spec- 3° 
tacles on, reading. The book was Shaftesbury's Characteristics, 
in a fine old binding, with Gribelin's etchings. My father would 
as lieve it had been any other book ; but for him to read was 
to be content, was " riches fineless." The sketch promised well ; 



92 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and I set to work to finish it, determined to spare no time nor 
pains. My father was willing to sit as long as I pleased ; for 
there is a natural desire in the mind of man to sit for one's 
picture, to be the object of continued attention, to have one's 
5 likeness multiplied ; and besides his satisfaction in the picture, 
he had some pride in the artist, though he would rather I should 
have written a sermon than painted like Rembrandt or like 
Raphael. Those winter days, with the gleams of sunshine com- 
ing through the chapel-windows, and cheered by the notes of 

lo the robin-redbreast in our garden (that " ever in the haunch of 
winter sings ") — as my afternoon's work drew to a close, — 
were among the happiest of my life. When I gave the effect I 
intended to any part of the picture for which I had prepared 
my colours, when I imitated the roughness of the skin by a 

15 lucky stroke of the pencil, when I hit the clear pearly tone of 
a vein, when I gave the ruddy complexion of health, the blood 
circulating under the broad shadows of one side of the face, I 
thought my fortune made ; or rather it was already more than 
made, in my fancying that I might one day be able to say with 

20 Correggio, ''^ I also am a pai?iter ! " It was an idle thought, a 
boy's conceit ; but it did not make me less happy at the time. 
I used regularly to set my work in the chair to look at it through 
the long evenings ; and many a time did I return to take leave 
of it before I could go to bed at night. I remember sending it 

25 with a throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing it hung up 
there by the side of one of the Honourable Mr. Skeffington 
(now Sir George). There was nothing in common between ' 
them, but that they were the portraits of two very good-natured 
men. I think, but am not sure, that I finished this portrait (or 

30 another afterwards) on the same day that the news of the battle 
of Austerlitz came ; I walked out in the afternoon, and, as I 
returned, saw the evening star set over a poor man's cottage 
with other thoughts and feelings than I shall ever have again. 
Oh for the revolution of the great Platonic year, that those times 



ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 93 

might come over again ! I could sleep out the three hundred and 
sixty-five thousand intervening years very contentedly ! — The 
picture is left : the table, the chair, the window where I learned 
to construe Livy, the chapel where my father preached, remain 
where they were ; but he himself is gone to rest, full of years, 
of faith, of hope, and charity ! 



ON READING OLD BOOKS 

I hate to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes 
that I have read over and over again, and these are the only 
ones that I have any desire ever to read at all. It was a long 
time before I could bring myself to sit down to the Tales of My 
5 Landlord, but now that author's works have made a considerable 
addition to my scanty library. I am told that some of Lady 
Morgan's are good, and have been recommended to look into 
Anastasius ; but I have not yet ventured upon that task. A 
lady, the other day, could not refrain from expressing her sur- 

10 prise to a friend, who said he had been reading Delphine : — 
she asked, — If it had not been published some time back ? 
Women judge of books as they do of fashions or complexions, 
which are admired only " in their newest gloss." That is not 
my way. I am not one of those who trouble the circulating 

15 libraries much, or pester the booksellers for mail-coach copies 
of standard periodical publications. I cannot say that I am 
greatly addicted to black-letter, but I profess myself well versed 
in the marble bindings of Andrew Millar, in the middle of the 
last century ; nor does my taste revolt at Thurloe's State Papers, 

20 in Russia leather ; or an ample impression of Sir William 
Temple's Essays, with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller in 
front. I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having 
survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence 
in the dead than the living. Contemporary writers may gener- 

25 ally be divided into two classes — one's friends or one's foes. Of 
the first we are compelled to think too well, and of the last we 
are disposed to think too ill, to receive much genuine pleasure 
from the perusal, or to judge fair!}- of the merits of either. One 

94 



ON READING OLD BOOKS 95 

candidate for literary fame, who happens to be of our acquaint- 
ance, writes finely, and like a man of genius ; but unfortunately 
has a foolish face, which spoils a delicate passage : — another 
inspires us with the highest respect for his personal talents and 
character, but does not quite come up to our expectations in 5 
print. All these contradictions and petty details interrupt the 
calm current of our reflections. If you want to know what any 
of the authors were who lived before our time, and are still 
objects of anxious inquiry, you have only to look into their 
works. But the dust and smoke and noise of modern literature 10 
have nothing in common with the pure, silent air of immortality. 
When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener 
the better) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is 
not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is 
altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish, — 1 5 
turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt what 
to think of the composition. There is a want of confidence and 
security to second appetite. New-fangled books are also like 
made-dishes in this respect, that they are generally little else than 
hashes and rifaccimentos of what has been served up entire and 20 
in a more natural state at other times. Besides, in thus turning 
to a well-known author, there is not only an assurance that my 
time will not be thrown away, or my palate nauseated with the 
most insipid or vilest trash, — but I shake hands with, and look 
an old, tried, and valued friend in the face, — compare notes, 25 
and chat the hours away. It is true, we form dear friendships 
with such ideal guests — dearer, alas ! and more lasting, than 
those with our most intimate acquaintance. In reading a book 
which is an old favourite with me (say the first novel I ever 
read) I not only have the pleasure of imagination and of a crit- 30 
ical relish of the v^^ork, but the pleasures of memory added to it. 
It recals the same feelings and associations which I had in first 
reading it, and which I can never have again in any other way. 
Standard productions of this kind are links in the chain of our 



96 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

conscious being. They bind together the different scattered 
divisions of our personal identity. They are land-marks and 
guides in our journey through life. They are pegs and loops on 
which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at 
5 pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our 
best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours. 
They are " for thoughts and for remembrance ! " They are like 
Fortunatus's Wishing-Cap — they give us the best riches — 
those of Fancy ; and transport us, not over half the globe, but 

lo (which is better) over half our lives, at a word's notice ! 

My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give 
me for this purpose a volume of Peregrine Pickle or Tom Jones. 
Open either of them any where — at the Memoirs of Lady Vane, 
or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or 

15 the disputes between Thwackum and Square, or the escape of 
Molly Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and her muff, or the 
edifying prolixity of her aunt's lecture — and there I find the 
same delightful, busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself 
the same as when I was first introduced into the midst of it. 

20 Nay, sometimes the sight of an odd volume of these good old 
English authors on a stall, or the name lettered on the back 
among others on the shelves of a library, answers the purpose, 
revives the whole train of ideas, and sets " the puppets dallying." 
Twenty years are struck off the list, and I am a child again. A 

25 sage philosopher, who was not a very wise man, said, that he 
should like very well to be young again, if he could take his 
experience along with him. This ingenious person did not seem 
to be aware, by the gravity of his remark, that the great advan- 
tage of being young is to be without this weight of experience, 

30 which he would fain place upon the shoulders of youth, and 
which never comes too late with years. Oh ! what a privilege 
to be able to let this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop from 
off one's back, and transport one's-self, by the help of a little 
musty duodecimo, to the time when " ignorance was bliss," and 



ON READING OLD BOOKS 97 

when we first got a peep at the raree-show of the world, through 
the glass of fiction — gazing at mankind, as we do at wild beasts 
in a menagerie, through the bars of their cages, — or at curiosi- 
ties in a museum, that we must not touch ! For myself, not 
only are the old ideas of the contents of the work brought back 5 
to my mind in all their vividness, but the old associations of 
the faces and persons of those I then knew, as they were in 
their life-time — the place where I sat to read the volume, 
the day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky 
— return, and all my early impressions with them. This is 10 
better to me — those places, those times, those persons, and 
those feelings that come across me as I retrace the story and 
devour the page, are to me better far than the wet sheets of the 
last new novel from the Ballantyne press, to say nothing of the 
Minerva press in Leadenhall-street. It is like visiting the scenes 15 
of early youth. I think of the time " when I was in my father's 
house, and my path ran down with butter and honey," — when 
I was a little, thoughtless child, and had no other wish or care 
but to con my daily task, and be happy ! — Tom Jones, I re- 
member, was the first work that broke the spell. It came down 20 
in numbers once a fortnight, in Cooke's pocket-edition, embel- 
lished with cuts. I had hitherto read only in school-books, and 
a tiresome ecclesiastical history (with the exception of Mrs. 
Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest) : but this had a different 
relish with it, — "sweet in the mouth," though not "bitter in 25 
the belly." It smacked of the world I lived in, and in which I 
was to live — ■ and shewed me groups, " gay creatures " not " of 
the element," but of the earth ; not " living in the clouds," but 
travelling the same road that I did ; — some that had passed on 
before me, and others that might soon overtake me. My heart 30 
had palpitated at the thoughts of a boarding-school ball, or 
gala-day at Midsummer or Christmas : but the world I had 
found out in Cooke's edition of the British Novelists was to 
me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-day. The six- penny 



98 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

numbers of this work regularly contrived to leave off just in the 
middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story, where Tom 
Jones discovers Square behind the blanket ; or where Parson 
Adams, in the inextricable confusion of events, very undesign- 
5 edly gets to bed to Mrs. Slip-slop. Let me caution the reader 
against this impression of Joseph Andrews ; for there is a pic- 
ture of Fanny in it which he should not set his heart on, lest he 
should never meet with any thing like it ; or if he should, it 
would, perhaps, be better for him that he had not. It was just 

lo like ! With what eagerness I used to look forward 

to the next number, and open the prints ! Ah ! never again 
shall I feel the enthusiastic delight with which I gazed at the 
figures, and anticipated the story and adventures of Major Bath 
and Commodore Trunnion, of Trim and my Uncle Toby, of 

15 Don Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil Bias and Dame 
Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia, whose lips 
open and shut like buds of roses. To what nameless ideas did 
they give rise, — with what airy delights I filled up the outlines, 
as I hung in silence over the page ! — Let me still recal them, 

20 that they may breathe fresh life into me, and that I may live 

that birthday of thought and romantic pleasure over again ! 

Talk of the ideal! This is the only true ideal — -the heavenly 

tints of Fancy reflected in the bubbles that float upon the 

spring-tide of human life. 

25 Oh! Memory! shield me from the world's poor strife, 

And give those scenes thine everlasting life ! 

The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less startling 
than it was ; the reader will, by this time, have been let into my 
secret. Much about the same time, or I believe rather earlier, 
30 I took a particular satisfaction in reading Chubb's Tracts, and I 
often think I will get them again to wade through. There is a 
high gusto of polemical divinity in them ; and you fancy that 
you hear a club of shoemakers at Salisbury, debating a disputa- 
ble text from one of St. Paul's Fpistles in a workmanlike style, 



ON READING OLD BOOKS 99 

with equal shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say much for 
my metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after 
with great ardour, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I was 
presently entangled in the briars and thorns of subtle distinc- 
tions, — of "fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute,'' though 5 
I cannot add that " in their wandering mazes I found no end; " 
for I did arrive at some very satisfactory and potent conclusions ; 
nor will I go so far, however ungrateful the subject might seem, 
as to exclaim with Marlowe's Faustus — "Would I had never 
seen Wittenberg, never read book " — that is, never studied such 10 
authors as Hartley, Hume, Berkeley, &c. Locke's Essay on the 
Human Understanding is, however, a work from which I never 
derived either pleasure or profit ; and Hobbes, dry and powerful 
as he is, I did not read till long afterwards. I read a few poets, 
which did not much hit my taste, — for I would have the reader 15 
understand, I am deficient in the faculty of imagination ; but I 
fell early upon French romances and philosophy, and devoured 
them tooth-and-nail. Many a dainty repast have I made of the 
New Eloise; — the description of the kiss; the excursion on the 
water ; the letter of St. Preux, recalling the time of their first 20 
loves ; and the account of Julia's death ; these I read over and 
over again with unspeakable delight and wonder. Some years 
after, when I met with this work again, I found I had lost 
nearly my whole relish for it (except some few parts) and was 
I remember, very much mortified with the change in my taste, 25 
which I sought to attribute to the smallness and gilt edges of 
the edition I had bought, and its being perfumed with rose- 
leaves. Nothing could exceed the gravity, the solemnity with 
which I carried home and read the Dedication to the Social 
Contract, with some other pieces of the same author, which I 30 
had picked up at a stall in a coarse leathern cover. Of the 
Confessions I have spoken elsewhere, and may repeat what I 
have said- — "Sweet is the dew of their memory, and pleas- 
ant the balm of their recollection ! " Their beauties are not 



lOO SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

" scattered like stray-gifts o'er the earth," but sown thick on the 
page, rich and rare. I wish I had never read the Emilius, or 
read it with less implicit faith. I had no occasion to pamper 
my natural aversion to affectation or pretence, by romantic and 
5 artificial means. I had better have formed myself on the model 
of Sir Fopling Flutter. There is a class of persons whose 
virtues and most shining qualities sink in, and are concealed by, 
an absorbent ground of modesty and reserve ; and such a one 
I do, without vanity, profess myself.'^ Now these are the very 

10 persons who are likely to attach themselves to the character of 
Emilius, and of whom it is sure to be the bane. This dull, 
phlegmatic, retiring humour is not in a fair way to be corrected, 
but confirmed and rendered desperate, by being in that work 
held up as an object of imitation, as an example of simplicity 

1 5 and magnanimity — by coming upon us with all the recom- 
mendations of novelty, surprise, and superiority to the prejudices 
of the world — by being stuck upon a pedestal, made amiable, 
dazzling, a leurre de dupe ! The reliance on solid worth which it 
inculcates, the preference of sober truth to gaudy tinsel, hangs 

2o like a mill-stone round the neck of the imagination — "a load 
to sink a navy " — impedes our progress, and blocks up every 
prospect in life. A man, to get on, to be successful, conspicuous, 
applauded, should not retire upon the centre of his conscious 
resources, but be always at the circumference of appearances. 

25 He must envelop himself in a halo of mystery — he must ride 
in an equipage of opinion — he must walk with a train of self- 
conceit following him — he must not strip himself to a buff- 
jerkin, to the doublet and hose of his real merits, but must 
surround himself with a cortege of prejudices, like the cigns of 

30 the Zodiac — he must seem anything but what he is, and then 
he may pass for anything he pleases. The world love to be 

1 Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a friend, 
who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to write, returned on 
his hands for their too great severity of thought and classical terseness of style, 
and who observed on that occasion, that " Modest merit never can succeed 1 " 



ON READING OLD BOOKS lOI 

amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering 
appearances, to live in a state of hallucination ; and can forgive 
everything but the plain, downright, simple honest truth — such 
as we see it chalked out in the character of Emilius. — To 
return from this digression, which is a little out of place here. 5 

Books have in a great measure lost their power over me ; 
nor can I revive the same interest in them as formerly. I per- ' 
ceive when a thing is good, rather than feel it. It is true, 

Marcian Colonna is a dainty book ; 

and the reading of Mr. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes lately made me 10 
regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and tender 
images there conjured up, "come like shadows — so depart." 
The " tiger-moth's wings," which he has spread over his rich 
poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy ; the gorgeous twilight 
window which he has painted over again in his verse, to me 15 
" blushes " almost in vain " with blood of queens and kings." 
I know how I should have felt at one time in reading such 
passages ; and that is all. The sharp luscious flavour, the fine 
aroma is fled, and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of 
literature is left. If any one were to ask me what I read now, 20 
I might answer with my Lord Hamlet in the play — " Words, 
words, words." — '' What is the matter?" — ^^ Nothing ! '' — 
They have scarce a meaning. But it was not always so. There 
was a time when to my thinking, every word was a flower or a 
pearl, like those which dropped from the mouth of the little 25 
peasant-girl in the Fairy tale, or like those that fall from the 
great preacher in the Caledonian Chapel ! I drank of the stream 
of knowledge that tempted, but did not mock my lips, as of the 
river of life, freely. How eagerly I slaked my thirst of German 
sentiment, " as the hart that panteth for the water-springs ; " 30 
how I bathed and revelled, and added my floods of tears to 
Goethe's Sorrows of Werter, and to Schiller's Robbers — 

Giving my stock of more to that which had too much ! 



I02 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

I read, and assented with all my soul to Coleridge's fine 
Sonnet, beginning — 

Schiller! that hour I would have wish'd to die, 
If through the shuddering midnight I had sent, 
5 From the dark dungeon of the tow'r time-rent, 

That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry ! 

I believe I may date my insight into the mysteries of poetry 

■ from the commencement of my acquaintance with the authors 

of the Lyrical Ballads ; at least, my discrimination of the higher 

lo sorts — not my predilection for such writers as Goldsmith or 
Pope : nor do I imagine they will say I got my liking for the 
Novelists, or the comic writers, — for the characters of Valentine, 
Tattle, or Miss Prue, from them. If so, I must have got from 
them what they never had themselves. In points where poetic 

15 diction and conception are concerned, I may be at a loss, and 
liable to be imposed upon : but in forming an estimate of 
passages relating to common life and manners, I cannot think I 
am a plagiarist from any man. I there " know my cue without 
a prompter." I may say of such studies — Intus et in cute. I 

20 am just able to admire those literal touches of observation and 
description, which persons of loftier pretensions overlook and 
despise. I think I comprehend something of the characteristic 
part of Shakspeare ; and in him indeed, all is characteristic, even 
the nonsense and poetry. I believe it was the celebrated Sir 

25 Humphry Davy who used to say, that Shakspeare was rather 
a metaphysician than a poet. At any rate, it was not ill said. I 
wish that I had sooner known the dramatic writers contempo- 
rary with Shakspeare ; for in looking them over about a year 
ago, I almost revived my old passion for reading, and my old 

30 delight in books, though they were very nearly new to me. 
The Periodical Essayists I read long ago. The Spectator I 
liked extremely : but the Tatler took my fancy most. I read 
the others soon after, the Rambler, the Adventurer, the World, 
the Connoisseur : I was not sorry to get to the end of them, 



ON READING OLD BOOKS 103 

and have no desire to go regularly through them again. I con- 
sider myself a thorough adept in Richardson. I like the longest 
of his novels best, and think no part of them tedious ; nor 
should I ask to have any thing better to do than to read them 
from beginning to end, to take them up when I chose, and lay 5 
them down when I was tired, in some old family mansion in 
the country, till every word and syllable relating to the bright 
Clarissa, the divine Clementina, the beautiful Pamela, " with 
every trick and line of their sweet favour," were once more 
" graven in my heart's table." ^ I have a sneaking kindness for 10 
Mackenzie's Julia de Roubigne — for the deserted mansion, and 
straggling gilliflowers on the mouldering garden-wall ; and still 
more for his Man of Feeling ; not that it is better, nor so good ; 
but at the time I read it, I sometimes thought of the heroine. 

Miss Walton, and of Miss together, and "that ligament, 15 

fine as it was, was never broken ! " — One of the poets that I 
have always read with most pleasure, and can wander about in 
for ever with a sort of voluptuous indolence, is Spenser ; and I 
like Chaucer even better. The only writer among the Italians 
I can pretend to any knowledge of, is Boccaccio, and of him I 20 
cannot express half my admiration. His story of the Hawk I 
could read and think of from day to day, just as I would look 
at a picture of Titian's ! — • 

I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a 
neighbouring town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar has laid the 25 
plot of his Recruiting Officer) and bringing home with me, " at 
one proud swoop," a copy of Milton's Paradise Lost, and another 
of Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution — ■ both which 

1 During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name of Love- 
lace, was presented at Buonaparte's levee. Instead of the usual question, 
" Where have you served, Sir ? " the First Consul immediately addressed him, 
" I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the hero of Richardson's 
Romance ! " Here was a Consul. The young man's uncle, who was called 
T.ovelace, told me this anecdote while we were stopping together at Calais. I 
had also been thinking that his was the same name as that of the hero of 
Richardson's Romance. This is one of my reasons for liking Buonaparte. 



I04 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

I have still ; and I still recollect, when I see the covers, the 
pleasure with which I dipped into them as I returned with my 
double prize. I was set up for one while. That time is past 
" with all its giddy raptures : " but I am still anxious to preserve 
5 its memory, "embalmed with odours." — -With respect to the 
first of these works, I would be permitted to remark here in 
passing, that it is a sufficient answer to the German criticism 
which has since been started against the character of Satan 
(z'iz. that it is not one of disgusting deformity, or pure, defecated 
lo malice) to say that Milton has there drawn, not the abstract 
principle of evil, not a devil incarnate, but a fallen angel. This 
is the scriptural account, and the poet has followed it. We may 
safely retain such passages as that well-known one — 

His form had not yet lost 

15 All her original brightness ; nor appear'd 

Less than archangel ruin'd ; and the excess 
Of glory obscur'd — 

for the theory, which is opposed to them, " falls flat upon the 
grunsel edge, and shames its worshippers." Let us hear no 

20 more then of this monkish cant, and bigoted outcry for the 
restoration of the horns and tail of the devil ! — Again, as to the 
other work, Burke's Reflections, I took a particular pride and 

' pleasure in it, and read it to myself and others for months 
afterwards. I had reason for my prejudice in favour of this 

25 author. To understand an adversary is some praise : to admire 
him is more. I thought I did both : I knew I did one. From 
the first time I ever cast my eyes on any thing of Burke's (which 
was an extract from his Letter to a Noble Lord in a three-times 
a week paper. The St. James's Chronicle, in 1796), I said to 

30 myself, " This is true eloquence : this is a man pouring out his 
mind on paper." All other style seemed to me pedantic and 
impertinent. Dr. Johnson's was walking on stilts ; and even 
Junius's (who was at that time a favourite with me) with all his 
terseness, shrunk up into little antithetic points and well-trimmed 



ON READING OLD BOOKS 105 

sentences. But Burke's style was forked and playful as the 
lightning, crested like the serpent. He delivered plain things 
on a plain ground ; but when he rose, there was no end of his 
flights and circumgyrations — and in this very Letter, " he, like 
an eagle in a dove-cot, fluttered his Volscians" (the Duke of 5 
Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale)^ "in Corioli." I did not 
care for his doctrines. I was then, and am still, proof against 
their contagion ; but I admired the author, and was considered 
as not a very staunch partisan of the opposite side, though I 
thought myself that an abstract proposition was one thing — a 10 
masterly transition, a brilliant metaphor, another. I conceived 
too that he might be wrong in his main argument, and yet 
deliver fifty truths in arriving at a false conclusion. I remember 
Coleridge assuring me, as a poetical and political set-off to my 
sceptical admiration, that Wordsworth had written an Essay on 1 5 
Marriage, which, for manly thought and nervous expression, he 
deemed incomparably superior. As I had not, at that time, 
seen any specimens of Mr. Wordsworth's prose style, I could 
not express my doubts on the subject. If there are greater 
prose-writers than Burke, they either lie out of my course of 20 
study, or are beyond my sphere of comprehension. I am too 
old to be a convert to a new mythology of genius. The niches 
are occupied, the tables are full. If such is still my admiration 
of this man's misapplied powers, what must it have been at a 
time when I myself was in vain trying, year after year, to write 25 
a single Essay, nay, a single page or sentence ; when I regarded 
the wonders of his pen with the longing eyes of one who was 
dumb and a changeling; and when, to be able to convey the 
slightest conception of my meaning to others in words, was the 
height of an almost hopeless ambition ! But I never measured 30 
others' excellences by my own defects : though a sense of my 
own incapacity, and of the steep, impassable ascent from me 
to them, made me regard them with greater awe and fondness. 

1 He is there called " Citizen Lauderdale." Is this the present Earl ? 



Io6 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

I have thus run through most of my early studies and favourite 
authors, some of whom I have since criticised more at large. 
Whether those observations will survive me, I neither know nor 
do I much care : but to the works themselves, " worthy of all 
5 acceptation," and to the feelings they have always excited in 
me since I could distinguish a meaning in language, nothing 
shall ever prevent me from looking back with gratitude and 
triumph. To have lived in the cultivation of an intimacy with 
such works, and to have familiarly relished such names, is not 

lo to have lived quite in vain. 

There are other authors whom I have never read, and yet 
whom I have frequently had a great desire to read, from some 
circumstance relating to them. Among these is Lord Claren- 
don's History of the Grand Rebellion, after which I have a 

15 hankering, from hearing it spoken of by good judges — from 
my interest in the events, and knowledge of the characters 
from other sources, and from having seen fine portraits of most 
of them. I like to read a well-penned character, and Clarendon 
is said to have been a master in this way. I should like to read 

20 Froissart's Chronicles, Hollingshed and Stowe, and Fuller's 
Worthies. I intend, whenever I can, to read Beaumont and 
Fletcher all through. There are fifty-two of their plays, and I 
have only read a dozen or fourteen of them. A Wife for a 
Month, and Thierry and Theodoret, are, I am told, delicious, 

25 and I can believe it. I should like to read the speeches in 
Thucydides, and Guicciardini's History of Florence, and Don 
Quixote in the original. I have often thought of reading the 
Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, and the Galatea of the same 
author. But I somehow reserve them like " another Yarrow." 

30 I should also like to read the last new novel (if I could be sure 
it was so) of the author of Waverley : — no one would be more 
glad than I to find it the best ! — 



ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 

"And blind Orion hungry for the morn." 

Orion, the subject of this landscape, was the classical Nim- 
rod ; and is called by Homer, ''a hunter of shadows, himself 
a shade." He was the son of Neptune ; and having lost an eye 
in some affray between the Gods and men, was told that if he 5 
would go to meet the rising sun, he would recover his sight. 
He is represented setting out on his journey, with men on his 
shoulders to guide him, a bow in his hand, and Diana in the 
clouds greeting him. He stalks along, a giant upon earth, and 
reels and falters in his gait, as if just awaked out of sleep, or 10 
uncertain of his way ; — you see his blindness, though his back 
is turned. Mists rise around him, and veil the sides of the green 
forests ; earth is dank and fresh with dews, the " grey dawn 
and the Pleiades before him dance," and in the distance are 
seen the blue hills and sullen ocean. Nothing was ever more 15 
finely conceived or done. It breathes the spirit of the morning ; 
its moisture, its repose, its obscurity, waiting the miracle of 
light to kindle it into smiles : the whole is, like the principal 
figure in it, " a forerunner of the dawn." The same atmosphere 
tinges and imbues every object, the same dull light " shadowy 20 
sets off " the face of nature : one feeling of vastness, of strange- 
ness, and of primeval forms pervades the painter's canvas, and 
we are thrown back upon the first integrity of things. This 
great and learned man might be said to see nature through the 
glass of time : he alone has a right to be considered as the 25 
painter of classical antiquity. Sir Joshua has done him justice 
in this respect. He could give to the scenery of his heroic 
fables that unimpaired look of original nature, full, solid, large, 

107 



I08 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

luxuriant, teeming with life and power ; or deck it with all the 
pomp of art, with temples and towers, and mythologic groves. 
His pictures " denote a foregone conclusion." He applies nature 
to his purposes, works out her images according to the standard 
5 of his thoughts, embodies high fictions ; and the first conception 
being given, all the rest seems to grow out of, and be assimilated 
to it, by the unfailing process of a studious imagination. Like 
his own Orion, he overlooks the surrounding scene, appears 
to " take up the isles as a very little thing, and to lay the earth 

lo in a balance." With a laborious and mighty grasp, he put 
nature into the mould of the ideal and antique ; and was among 
painters (more than any one else) what Milton was among poets. 
There is in both something of the same pedantry, the same 
stiffness, the same elevation, the same grandeur, the same 

15 mixture of art and nature, the same richness of borrowed 
materials, the same unity of character. Neither the poet nor 
the painter lowered the subjects they treated, but filled up the 
outline in the fancy, and added strength and reality to it ; and 
thus not only satisfied, but surpassed the expectations of the 

20 spectator and the reader. This is held for the triumph and the 
perfection of works of art. To give us nature, such as we see 
it, is well and deserving of praise ; to give us nature, such as 
we have never seen, but have often wished to see it, is better, 
and deserving of higher praise. He who can show the world 

25 in its first naked glory, with the hues of fancy spread over it, 
or in its high and palmy state, with the gravity of history 
stamped on the proud monuments of vanished empire, — who, 
by his '' so potent art," can recal time past, transport us to 
distant places, and join the regions of imagination (a new con- 

30 quest) to those of reality, — who shows us not only what nature 
is, but what she has been, and is capable of, — he who does 
this, and does it with simplicity, with truth, and grandeur, is 
lord of nature and her powers ; and his mind is universal, and 
his art the master-art ! 



ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 109 

There is nothing in this " more than natural," if criticism 
could be persuaded to think so. The historic painter does not 
neglect or contravene nature, but follows her more closely up 
into her fantastic heights, or hidden recesses. He demonstrates 
what she would be in conceivable circumstances, and under 5 
implied conditions. He " gives to airy nothing a local habita- 
tion," not " a name." At his touch, words start up into images, 
thoughts become things. He clothes a dream, a phantom with 
form and colour and the wholesome attributes of reality. His 
art is a second nature ; not a different one. There are those, 10 
indeed, who think that not to copy nature, is the rule for attain- 
ing perfection. Because they cannot paint the objects which 
they have seen, they fancy themselves qualified to paint the 
ideas which they have not seen. But it is possible to fail in this 
latter and more difficult style of imitation, as well as in the 15 
former humbler one. The detection, it is true, is not so easy, 
because the objects are not so nigh at hand to compare, and 
therefore there is more room both for false pretension and for 
self-deceit. They take an epic motto or subject, and conclude 
that the spirit is implied as a thing of course. They paint 20 
inferior portraits, maudlin lifeless faces, without ordinary ex- 
pression, or one look, feature, or particle of nature in them, 
and think that this is to rise to the truth of history. They 
vulgarise and degrade whatever is interesting or sacred to the 
mind, and suppose that they thus add to the dignity of their 25 
profession. They represent a face that seems as if no thought 
or feeling of any kind had ever passed through it, and would 
have you believe that this is the very sublime of expression, 
such as it would appear in heroes, or demi-gods of old, when 
rapture or agony was raised to its height. They show you 30 
a landscape that looks as if the sun never shone upon it, and 
tell you that it is not modern — that so earth looked when 
Titan first kissed it with his rays. This is not the true ideal. 
It is not to fill the moulds of the imagination, but to deface and 



no SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

injure them : it is not to come up to, but to fall short of the 
poorest conception in the public mind. Such pictures should 
not be hung in the same room with that of Orion. ^ 

Poussin was, of all painters, the most poetical. He was the 
5 painter of ideas. No one ever told a story half so well, nor so 
well knew what was capable of being told by the pencil. He 
seized on, and struck off with grace and precision, just that point 
of view which would be likely to catch the reader's fancy. There 
is a significance, a consciousness in whatever he does (sometimes 

lo a vice, but oftener a virtue) beyond any other painter. His Giants 
sitting on the tops of craggy mountains, as huge themselves, and 
playing idly on their Pan's-pipes, seem to have been seated there 
these three thousand years, and to know the beginning and the 
end of their own story. An infant Bacchus or Jupiter is big with 

15 his future destiny. Even inanimate and dumb things speak a 
language of their own. His snakes, the messengers of fate, are 
inspired with human intellect. His trees grow and expand their 
leaves in the air, glad of the rain, proud of the sun, awake to 



1 Every thing tends to show the manner in which a great artist is formed. If 
any person could claim an exemption from the careful imitation of individual 
objects, it was Nicolas Poussin. He studied the antique, but he also studied 
nature. " I have often admired," says Vignuel de Marville, who knew him at a 
late period of his life, " the love he had for his art. Old as he was, 1 frequently 
saw him among the ruins of ancient Rome, out in the Campagna, or along the 
banks of the Tyber, sketching a scene that had pleased him ; and I often met him 
with his handkerchief full of stones, moss, or flowers, which he carried home, that 
he might copy them exactly from nature. One day I asked him how he had 
attained to such a degree of perfection, as to have gained so high a rank among 
the great painters of Italy.? He answered, I have neglected nothing." — 
See his Life lately published. It appears from this account that he had not fallen 
into a recent error, that Nature puts the man of genius out. .'^s a contrast to the 
foregoing description, I might mention, that I remember an old gentleman once 
asking Mr. West in the British Gallery, if he had ever been at Athens ? To which 
the President made answer, No ; nor did he feel any great desire to go ; for that 
he thought he had as good an idea of the place from the Catalogue, as he could 
get by living there for any number of years. AVhat would he have said, if any one 
had told him, he could get as good an idea of the subject of one of his great works 
from reading the Catalogue of it, as from seeing the picture itself ! Yet the answer 
was characteristic of the genius of the painter. 



ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN ill 

the winds of heaven. In his Plague of Athens, the very buildings 
seem stiff with horror. His picture of the Deluge is, perhaps, 
the finest historical landscape in the world. You see a waste of 
waters, wide, interminable : the sun is labouring, wan and weary, 
up the sky ; the clouds, dull and leaden, lie like a load upon the 5 
eye, and heaven and earth seem commingling into one confused 
mass ! His human figures are sometimes " o'er-informed " with 
this kind of feeling. Their actions have too much gesticulation, 
and the set expression of the features borders too much on the 
mechanical and caricatured style. In this respect, they form a 10 
contrast to Raphael's, whose figures never appear to be sitting 
for their pictures, or to be conscious of a spectator, or to have 
come from the painter's hand. In Nicolas Poussin, on the con- 
trary, every thing seems to have a distinct understanding with 
the artist; "the very stones prate of their whereabout: " each 15 
object has its part and place assigned, and is in a sort of com- 
pact with the rest of the picture. It is this conscious keeping, 
and, as it were, internal design, that gives their peculiar char- 
acter to the works of this artist. There was a picture of Aurora 
in the British Gallery a year or two ago. It was a suffusion of 20 
golden light. The Goddess wore her saffron-coloured robes, and 
appeared just risen from the gloomy bed of old Tithonus. Her 
very steeds, milk-white, were tinged with the yellow dawn. It was 
a personification of the morning. — • Poussin succeeded better in 
classic than in sacred subjects. The latter are comparatively 25 
heavy, forced, full of violent contrasts of colour, of red, blue, 
and black, and without the true prophetic inspiration of the char- 
acters. But in his Pagan allegories and fables he was quite at 
home. The native gravity and native levity of the Frenchman 
were combined with Italian scenery and an antique gusto, and 30 
gave even to his colouring an air of learned indifference. He 
wants, in one respect, grace, form, expression ; but he has every 
where sense and meaning, perfect costume and propriety. His 
personages always belong to the class and time represented, and 



112 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

are strictly versed in the business in hand. His grotesque com- 
positions in particular, his Nymphs and Fauns, are superior (at 
least, as far as style is concerned) even to those of Rubens. They 
are taken more immediately out of fabulous history. Rubens's 
5 Satyrs and Bacchantes have a more jovial and voluptuous aspect, 
are more drunk with pleasure, more full of animal spirits and 
riotous impulses ; they laugh and bound along — 

Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring : 
but those of Poussin have more of the intellectual part of the 

lo character, and seem vicious on reflection, and of set purpose. 
Rubens's are noble specimens of a class ; Poussin's are allegor- 
ical abstractions of the same class, with bodies less pampered, 
but with minds more secretly depraved. The Bacchanalian 
groups of the Flemish painter were, however, his masterpieces 

15 in composition. Witness those prodigies of colour, character, 
and expression at Blenheim. In the more chaste and refined 
delineation of classic fable, Poussin was without a rival. Rubens, 
who was a match for him in the wild and picturesque, could not 
pretend to vie with the elegance and purity of thought in his 

20 picture of Apollo giving a poet a cup of water to drink, nor with 
the gracefulness of design in the figure of a nymph squeezing 
the juice of a bunch of grapes from her fingers (a rosy wine- 
press) which falls into the mouth of a chubby infant below. But, 
above all, who shall celebrate, in terms of fit praise, his picture 

25 of the shepherds in the Vale of Tempe going out in a fine morn- 
ing of the spring, and coming to a tomb with this inscription : — 
Et ego in Arcadia vixi ! The eager curiosity of some, the 
expression of others who start back with fear and surprise, the 
clear breeze playing with the branches of the shadowing trees, 

30 " the valleys low, where the mild zephyrs use," the distant, un- 
interrupted, sunny prospects speak (and for ever will speak on) 
of ages past to ages yet to come ! ^ 

1 Poussin has repeated this subject more than once, and appears to have revelled 
in its witcheries. I have before alluded to it, and may again. It is hard that we 



ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 113 

Pictures are a set of chosen images, a stream of pleasant 
thoughts passing through the mind. It is a luxury to have the 
walls of our rooms hung round with them, and no less so to have 
such a gallery in the mind, to con over the relics of ancient art 
bound up " within the book and volume of the brain, unmixed 5 
(if it were possible) with baser matter ! " A life passed among 
pictures, in the study and the love of art, is a happy noiseless 
dream : or rather, it is to dream and to be awake at the same 
time ; for it has all " the sober certainty of waking bliss," with 
the romantic voluptuousness of a visionary and abstracted being. 10 
They are the bright consummate essences of things, and " he 
who knows of these delights to taste and interpose them oft, is 
not unwise!" — The Orion, which I have here taken occasion 
to descant upon, is one of a collection of excellent pictures, as 
this collection is itself one of a series from the old masters, which 1 5 
have for some years back embrowned the walls of the British 
Gallery, and enriched the public eye. What hues (those of nature 
mellowed by time) breathe around, as we enter ! What forms are 
there, woven into the memory ! What looks, which only the 
answering looks of the spectator can express ! What intellectual 20 
stores have been yearly poured forth from the shrine of ancient 
art ! The works are various, but the names the same — heaps 
of Rembrandts frowning from the darkened walls, Rubens's glad 
gorgeous groups, Titians more rich and rare, Claudes always 
.exquisite, sometimes beyond compare, Guido's endless cloy- 25 
ing sweetness, the learning of Poussin and the Caracci, and 
Raphael's princely magnificence, crowning all. We read certain 
letters and syllables in the catalogue, and at the well-known 
magic sound, a miracle of skill and beauty starts to view. One 
might think that one year's prodigal display of such perfection 30 
would exhaust the labours of one man's life ; but the next 
year, and the next to that, we find another harvest reaped and 

should not be allowed to dwell as often as we please on what delights us, when 
things that are disagreeable recur so often against our will. 



114 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

gathered in to the great garner of art, by the same immortal 

hands — 

Old Genius the porter of them vv^as ; 
He letteth in, he letteth out to wend. — 

5 Their works seem endless as their reputation — to be many as 
they are complete — to multiply with the desire of the mind to 
see more and more of them ; as if there were a living power in 
the breath of Fame, and in the very names of the great heirs of 
glory " there were propagation too ! " It is something to have 

ID a collection of this sort to count upon once a year ; to have one 
last, lingering look yet to come. Pictures are scattered like stray 
gifts through the world ; and while they remain, earth has yet a 
little gilding left, not quite rubbed off, dishonoured, and defaced. 
There are plenty of standard works still to be found in this 

15 country, in the collections at Blenheim, at Burleigh, and in those 
belonging to Mr. Angerstein, Lord Grosvenor, the Marquis of 
Stafford, and others, to keep up this treat to the lovers of art 
for many years : and it is the more desirable to reserve a priv- 
ileged sanctuary of this sort, where the eye may dote, and the 

20 heart take its fill of such pictures as Poussin's Orion, since the 
Louvre is stripped of its triumphant spoils, and since he, who 
collected it, and wore it as a rich jewel in his Iron Crown, the 
hunter of greatness and of glor)^, is himself a shade ! — 



ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 

" And our little life is rounded with a sleep." 

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that 
life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when 
we were not : this gives us no concern — why then should it 
trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be ? I 5 
have no wish to have been alive a hundred years ago, or in the 
reign of Queen Anne : why should I regret and lay it so much 
to heart that I shall not be alive a hundred years hence, in the 
reign of I cannot tell whom ? 

When Bickerstaff wrote his Essays, I knew nothing of the 10 
subjects of them : nay, much later, and but the other day, 
as it were, in the beginning of the reign of George III. when 
Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke, used to meet at the Globe, when 
Garrick was in his glory, and Reynolds was over head and ears 
with his portraits, and Sterne brought out the volumes of 15 
Tristram Shandy year by year, it was without consulting me : 
I had not the slightest intimation of what was going on : the 
debates in the House of Commons on the American war, or 
the firing at Bunker's hill, disturbed not me : yet I thought 
this no evil — - 1 neither ate, drank, nor was merry, yet I did 20 
not complain : I had not then looked out into this breathing 
world, yet I was well ; and the world did quite as well without 
me as I did without it ! Why then should I make all this out- 
cry about parting with it, and being no worse off than I was 
before ? There is nothing in the recollection that at a certain 25 
time we were not come into the world, that " the gorge rises 
at" — why should we revolt at the idea that we must one day 
go out of it ? To die is only to be as we were before we were 

"5 



Il6 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

born ; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, 
in contemplating this last idea. It is rather a relief and dis- 
burthening of the mind : it seems to have been holiday-time 
with us then : we were not called to appear upon the stage 
5 of life, to wear robes or tatters, to laugh or cry, be hooted 
or applauded ; we had lain perdus all this while, snug, out 
of harm's way ; and had slept out our thousands of centuries 
without wanting to be waked up ; at peace and free from 
care, in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than 

lo that of infancy, wrapped in the ^softest and finest dust. And 
the worst that we dread is, after a short, fretful, feverish being, 
after vain hopes, and idle fears, to sink to final repose again, 
and forget the troubled dream of life ! . . . Ye armed men, 
knights templars, that sleep in the stone aisles of that old 

15 Temple church, where all is silent above, and where a deeper 
silence reigns below (not broken by the pealing organ), are ye 
not contented where ye lie ? Or would you come out of your 
long homes to go to the Holy War ? Or do ye complain that 
pain no longer visits you, that sickness has done its worst, 

20 that you have paid the last debt to nature, that you hear no 
more of the thickening phalanx of the foe, or your lady's wan- 
ing love ; and that while this ball of earth rolls its eternal 
round, no sound shall ever pierce through to disturb your last- 
ing repose, fixed as the marble over your tombs, breathless as 

25 the grave that holds you ! And thou, oh ! thou, to whom my 
heart turns, and will turn while it has feeling left, who didst 
love in vain, and whose first was thy last sigh, wilt not thou too 
rest in peace (or wilt thou cry to me complaining from thy clay- 
cold bed) when that sad heart is no longer sad, and that sorrow 

30 is dead which thou wert only called into the world to feel ! 

It is certain that there is nothing in the idea of a pre-existent 
state that excites our longing like the prospect of a posthumous 
existence. We are satisfied to have begun life when we did ; 
we have no ambition to have set out on our journey sooner; 



ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 11/ 

and feel that we have had quite enough to do to battle our way 
through since. We cannot say, 

" The wars we well remember of King Nine, 
Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine." 

Neither have we any wish : we are contented to read of them 5 
in story, and to stand and gaze at the vast sea of time that 
separates us from them. It was early days then : the world 
was not well-aired enough for us : we have no inclination to 
have been up and stirring. We do not consider the six thou- 
sand years of the world before we were bom as so much time 10 
lost to us : we are perfectly indifferent about the matter. We 
do not grieve and lament that we did not happen to be in time 
to see the grand mask and pageant of human life going on in 
all that period ; though we are mortified at being obliged to 
quit our stand before the rest of the procession passes. 15 

It may be suggested in explanation of this difference, that we 
know from various records and traditions what happened in the 
time of Queen Anne, or even in the reigns of the Assyrian 
monarchs : but that we have no means of ascertaining what is 
to happen hereafter but by awaiting the event, and that our 20 
eagerness and curiosity are sharpened in proportion as we are 
in the dark about it. This is not at all the case ; for at that 
rate we should be constantly wishing to make a voyage of 
discovery to Greenland or to the Moon, neither of which we 
have, in general, the least desire to do. Neither, in truth, have 25 
we any particular solicitude to pry into the secrets of futurity, 
but as a pretext for prolonging our own existence. It is not so 
much that we care to be alive a hundred or a thousand years 
hence, any more than to have been alive a hundred or a thou- 
sand years ago : but the thing lies here, that we would all of us 30 
wish the present moment to last for ever. We would be as we 
are, and would have the world remain just as it is, to please us. 

" The present eye catches the present object " — 



Il8 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

to have and to hold while it may ; and abhors, on any terms, to 
have it torn from us, and nothing left in its room. It is the 
pang of parting, the unloosing our grasp, the breaking asunder 
some strong tie, the leaving some cherished purpose unfulfilled, 
5 that creates the repugnance to go, and " makes calamity of so 
long life," as it often is. 

" Oh ! thou strong heart ! 

There's such a covenant 'twixt the world and thee, 
They're loth to break ! " 

lo The love of life, then, is an habitual attachment, not an abstract 
principle. Simply to be does not " content man's natural de- 
sire : " we long to be in a certain time, place, and circumstance. 
We would much rather be now, " on this bank and shoal of time," 
than have our choice of any future period, than take a slice of 

15 fifty or sixty years out of the Millennium, for instance. This 
shows that our attachment is not confined either to being or to 
7veU-belng ; but that we have an inveterate prejudice in favour of 
our immediate existence, such as it is. The mountaineer will 
not leave his rock, nor the savage his hut ; neither are we will- 

20 ing to give up our present mode of life, with all its advantages 
and disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted for 
it. No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any 
other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not 
be ourselves. There are some persons of that reach of soul that 

25 they would like to live two hundred and fifty years hence, to 
see to what height of empire America will have grown up in 
that period, or whether the English constitution will last so 
long. These are points beyond me. But I confess I should 
like to live to see the downfall of the Bourbons. That is a 

30 vital question with me ; and I should like it the better, the 
sooner it happens ! 

No young man ever thinks he shall die. He may believe 
that others will, or assent to the doctrine that " all men are 
mortal " as an abstract proposition, but he is far enough from 



ON THE FEAR OF DEATH II9 

bringing it home to himself individually.^ Youth, buoyant activ- 
ity, and animal spirits, hold absolute antipathy with old age as 
well as with death ; nor have we, in the hey-day of life, any 
more than in the thoughtlessness of childhood, the remotest 
conception how 5 

" This sensible warm motion can become 
A kneaded clod " — 

nor how sanguine, florid health and vigour shall " turn to 
withered, weak, and grey." Or if in a moment of idle specu- 
lation we indulge in this notion of the close of life as a theory, 10 
it is amazing at what a distance it seems ; what a long, leisurely 
interval there is between ; what a contrast its slow and solemn 
approach affords to our present gay dreams of existence ! We 
eye the farthest verge of the ho.rizon, and think what a way 
we shall have to look back upon ere we arrive at our journey's 15 
end ; and without our in the least suspecting it, the mists are 
at our feet, and the shadows of age encompass us. The two 
divisions of our lives have melted into each other : the extreme 
points close and meet with none of that romantic interval stretch- 
ing out between them, that we had reckoned upon ; and for the 20 
rich, melancholy, solemn hues of age, " the sear, the yellow leaf," 
the deepening shadows of an autumnal evening, we only feel a 
dank, cold mist, encircling all objects, after the spirit of youth 
is fled. There is no inducement to look forward ; and what is 
worse, little interest in looking back to what has become so 25 
trite and common. The pleasures of our existence have worn 
themselves out, are " gone into the wastes of time," or have 
turned their indifferent side to us : the pains by their repeated 
blows have worn us out, and have left us neither spirit nor in- 
clination to encounter them again in retrospect. We do not 30 
want to rip up old grievances, nor to renew our youth like 
the phoenix, nor to live our lives twice over. Once is enough. 

1 " All men think all men mortal but themselves." — Young. 



I20 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

As the tree falls, so let it lie. Shut up the book and close the 
account once for all ! 

It has been thought by some that life is like the exploring of 
a passage that grows narrower and darker the farther we ad- 
5 vance, without a possibility of ever turning back, and where we 
are stifled for want of breath at last. For myself, I do not 
complain of the greater thickness of the atmosphere as I ap- 
proach the narrow house. I felt it more, formerly,^ when the 
idea alone seemed to suppress a thousand rising hopes and 

10 weighed upon the pulses of the blood. At present I rather feel 
a thinness and want of support, I stretch out my hand to some 
object and find none, I am too much in a world of abstraction ; 
the naked map of life is spread out before me, and in the emp- 
tiness and desolation I see Death coming to meet me. In my 

IS youth I could not behold him for the crowd of objects and 
feelings, and Hope stood always between us, saying — " Never 
mind that old fellow 1" If I had lived indeed, I should not 
care to die. But I do not like a contract of pleasure broken off 
unfulfilled, a marriage with joy unconsummated, a promise of 

20 happiness rescinded. My public and private hopes have been 
left a ruin, or remain only to mock me. I would wish them to 
be re-edified. I should like to see some prospect of good to 
mankind, such as my life began with. I should like to leave 
some sterling work behind me. I should like to have some 

25 friendly hand to consign me to the grave. On these conditions 
I am ready, if not willing, to depart. I shall then write on my 
tomb — Grateful and Contented ! But I have thought and 
suffered too much to be willing to have thought and suffered in 
vain. — In looking back, it sometimes appears to me as if I 

30 had in a manner slept out my life in a dream or shadow on the 
side of the hill of knowledge, where I have fed on books, 

1 I remember once, in particular, having this feeling in reading Schiller's 
Don Carlos, where there is a description of death, in a degree that almost 
stifled me. 



ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 121 

on thoughts, on pictures, and only heard in half-murmurs the 
trampling of busy feet, or the noises of the throng below. Waked 
out of this dim, twilight existence, and startled with the passing 
scene, I have felt a wish to descend to the world of reali- 
ties, and join in the chase. But I fear too late, and that I had 5 
better return to my bookish chimeras and indolence once more ! 
Zanetfo, lascia le dofine, et studia la matematica. I will think of it. 

It is not wonderful that the contemplation and fear of death 
become more familiar to us as we approach nearer to it : that 
life seems to ebb with the decay of blood and youthful spirits ; 10 
and that as we find everything about us subject to chance and 
change, as our strength and beauty die, as our hopes and pas- 
sions, our friends and our affections leave us, we begin by de- 
grees to feel ourselves mortal 1 

I have never seen death but once, and that was in an infant. 15 
It is years ago. The look was calm and placid, and the face 
was fair and firm. It was as if a waxen image had been laid 
out in the coffin, and strewed with innocent flowers. It was not 
like death, but more like an image of life ! No breath moved 
the lips, no pulse stirred, no sight or sound would enter those 20 
eyes or ears more. While I looked at it, I saw no pain was 
there ; it seemed to smile at the short pang of life which was 
over : but I could not bear the coffin-lid to be closed — it seemed 
to stifle me ; and still as the nettles wave in a corner of the 
churchyard over his little grave, the welcome breeze helps to 25 
refresh me, and ease the tightness at my breast ! 

An ivory or marble image, like Chantry's monument of the 
two children, is contemplated with pure delight. Why do we 
not grieve and fret that the marble is not alive, or fancy that it 
has a shortness of breath ? It never was alive ; and it is the 30 
difficulty of making the transition from life to death, the struggle 
between the two in our imagination, that confounds their prop- 
erties painfully together, and makes us conceive that the infant 
that is but just dead, still wants to breathe, to enjoy, and look 



122 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

about it, and is prevented by the icy hand of death, locking up 
its faculties and benumbing its senses ; so that, if it could, it 
would complain of its own hard state. Perhaps religious con- 
siderations reconcile the mind to this change sooner than any 
5 others, by representing the spirit as fled to another sphere, and 
leaving the body behind it. So in reflecting on death generally, 
we mix up the idea of life with it, and thus make it the ghastly 
monster it is. We think how we should feel, not how the dead 

feel. 
10 " Still from the tomb the voice of nature cries ; 

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires ! " 

There is an admirable passage on this subject in Tucker's 
Light of Nature Pursued, which I shall transcribe, as by much 
the best illustration I can offer of it. 

IS " The melancholy appearance of a lifeless body, the mansion 
provided for it to inhabit, dark, cold, close and solitary, are 
shocking to the imagination ; but it is to the imagination only, 
not the understanding ; for whoever consults this faculty will 
see at first glance, that there is nothing dismal in all these cir- 

2o cumstances : if the corpse were kept wrapped up in a warm 
bed, with a roasting fire in the chamber, it would feel no com- 
fortable warmth therefrom ; were store of tapers lighted up as 
soon as day shuts in, it would see no objects to divert it ; were 
it left at large it would have no liberty, nor if surrounded with 

25 company would be cheered thereby ; neither are the distorted 
features expressions of pain, uneasiness, or distress. This every 
one knows, and will readily allow upon being suggested, yet still 
cannot behold, nor even cast a thought upon those objects with- 
out shuddering ; for knowing that a living person must suffer 

30 grievously under such appearances, they become habitually for- 
midable to the mind, and strike a mechanical horror, which is 
increased by the customs of the world around us." 

There is usually one pang added voluntarily and unnecessarily 
to the fear of death, by our affecting to compassionate the loss 



ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 123 

which others will have in us. If that were all, we might reason- 
ably set our minds at rest. The pathetic exhortation on country 
tombstones, '' Grieve not for me, my wife and children dear," 
&c. is for the most part speedily followed to the letter. We do 
not leave so great a void in society as we are inclined to imagine, 5 
partly to magnify our own importance, and partly to console 
ourselves by sympathy. Even in the same family the gap is not 
so great ; the wound closes up sooner than we should expect. 
Nay, otir roo?n is not infrequently thought better than our cofn- 
pany. People walk along the streets the day after our deaths 10 
just as they did before, and the crowd is not diminished. While 
we were living, the world seemed in a manner to exist only for 
us, for our delight and amusement, because it contributed to 
them. But our hearts cease to beat, and it goes on as usual, 
and thinks no more about us than it did in our life-time. The 1 5 
million are devoid of sentiment, and care as little for you or me 
as if we belonged to the moon. We live the week over in the 
Sunday's paper, or are decently interred in some obituary at the 
month's end ! It is not surprising that we are forgotten so soon 
after we quit this mortal stage : we are scarcely noticed, while 20 
we are on it. It is not merely that our names are not known in 
China — they have hardly been heard of in the next street. We 
are hand and glove with the universe, and think the obligation 
is mutual. This is an evident fallacy. If this, however, does not 
trouble us now, it will not hereafter. A handful of dust can have no 25 
quarrel to pick with its neighbours, or complaint to make against 
Providence, and might well exclaim, if it had but an understand- 
ing and a tongue, " Go thy ways, old world, swing round in blue 
ether, voluble to every age, you and I shall no more jostle ! " 

It is amazing how soon the rich and titled, and even some of 30 
those who have wielded great political power, are forgotten. 

" A little rule, a little sway. 
Is all the great and mighty have 
Betwixt the cradle and the grave " — 



124 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and, after its short date, they hardly leave a name behind them, 
" A great man's memory may, at the common rate, survive him 
half a year." His heirs and successors take his titles, his power, 
and his wealth — all that made him considerable or courted by 
5 others ; and he has left nothing else behind him either to delight 
or benefit the world. Posterity are not by any means so disin- 
terested as they are supposed to be. They give their gratitude 
and admiration only in return for benefits conferred. They 
cherish the memory of those to whom they are indebted for 

lo instruction and delight ; and they cherish it just in proportion 
to the instruction and delight they are conscious they receive. 
The sentiment of admiration springs immediately from this 
ground, and cannot be otherwise than well founded.^ 

The effeminate clinging to life as such, as a general or abstract 

15 idea, is the effect of a highly civilised and artificial state of so- 
ciety. Men formerly plunged into all the vicissitudes and dan- 
gers of war, or staked their all upon a single die, or some one 
passion, which if they could not have gratified, life became a 
burthen to them — now our strongest passion is to think, our chief 

20 amusement is to read new plays, new poems, new novels, and 
this we may do at our leisure, in perfect security, ad infiiiituni. 
If we look into the old histories and romances, before the belles- 
lettres neutralised human affairs and reduced passion to a state 
of mental equivocation, we find the heroes and heroines not set- 

25 ting their lives '' at a pin's fee," but rather courting opportunities 
of throwing them away in very wantonness of spirit. They raise 
their fondness for some favourite pursuit to its height, to a 
pitch of madness, and think no price too dear to pay for its full 

1 It has been usual to raise a very unjust clamour against the enormous sala- 
ries of public singers, actors, and so on. This matter seems reducible to a moral 
equation. They are paid out of money raised by voluntary contributions in 
the strictest sense ; and if they did not bring certain sums into the treasury, the 
Managers would not engage them. These sums are exactly in proportion to the 
number of individuals to whom their performance gives an extraordinary degree 
of pleasure. The talents of a singer, actor, &c. are therefore worth just as much 
as they will fetch. 



ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 1 25 

gratification. Everything else is dross. They go to death as to 
a bridal bed, and sacrifice themselves or others without remorse 
at the shrine of love, of honour, of religion, or any other pre- 
vailing feeling. Romeo runs his " seasick, weary bark upon the 
rocks " of death, the instant he finds himself deprived of his 5 
Juliet ; and she clasps his neck in their last agonies, and follows 
him to the same fatal shore. One strong idea takes possession 
of the mind and overrules every other ; and even life itself, joy- 
less without that, becomes an object of indifference or loathing. 
There is at least more of imagination in such a state of things, 10 
more vigour of feeling and promptitude to act than in our lin- 
gering, languid, protracted attachment to life for its own poor 
sake. It is, perhaps, also better, as well as more heroical, to 
strike at some daring or darling object, and if we fail in that, to 
take the consequences manfully, than to renew the lease of a 15 
tedious, spiritless, charmless existence, merely (as Pierre says) 
" to lose it afterwards in some vile brawl " for some worthless 
object. Was there not a spirit of martyrdom as well as a spice 
of the reckless energy of barbarism in this bold defiance of 
death ? Had not religion something to do with it ; the implicit 20 
belief in a future life, which rendered this of less value, and 
embodied something beyond it to the imagination ; so that the 
rough soldier, the infatuated lover, the valorous knight, &c. 
could afford to throw away the present venture, and take a leap 
into the arms of futurity, which the modern sceptic shrinks back 25 
from, with all his boasted reason and vain philosophy, weaker 
than a woman ! I cannot help thinking so myself ; but I have 
endeavoured to explain this point before, and will not enlarge 
further on it here. 

A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It 30 
not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every 
step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being. 
Sedentary and studious men are the most apprehensive on this 
score-. Dr. Johnson was an instance in point. A few years 



126 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

seemed to him soon over, compared with those sweeping con- 
templations on time and infinity with which he had been used 
to pose himself. In the still-life of a man of letters, there was 
no obvious reason for a change. He might sit in an arm- 
5 chair and pour out cups of tea to all eternity. Would it had 
been possible for him to do so 1 The most rational cure after 
all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life. 
If we merely wish to continue on the scene to indulge our head- 
strong humours and tormenting passions, we had better begone 
lo at once : and if we only cherish a fondness for existence accord- 
ing to the good we derive from it, the pang we feel at parting 
with it will not be very severe ! 



ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 

" Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, 
Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po." 

I never was in a better place or humour than I am at present 
for writing on this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for 
my supper, my fire is blazing on the hearth, the air is mild 5 
for the season of the year, I have had but a slight fit of indiges- 
tion to-day (the only thing that makes me abhor myself), I have 
three hours good before me, and therefore I will attempt it. It 
is as well to do it at once as to have it to do for a week to 
come. 10 

If the writing on this subject is no easy task, the thing itself 
is a harder one. It asks a troublesome effort to ensure the 
admiration of others : it is a still greater one to be satisfied 
with one's own thoughts. As I look from the window at the 
wide bare heath before me, and through the misty moon-light 15 
air see the woods that wave over the top of Winterslow, 

" While Heav'n's chancel-vault is blind with sleet," 

my mind takes its flight through too long a series of years, 
supported only by the patience of thought and secret yearnings 
after truth and good, for me to be at a loss to understand the 20 
feeling I intend to write about ; but I do not know that this 
will enable me to convey it more agreeably to the reader. 

Lady G. in a letter to Miss Harriet Byron, assures her that 
"her brother Sir Charles lived to himself:" and Lady L. soon 
after (for Richardson was never tired of a good thing) repeats 25 
the same observation ; to which Miss Byron frequently returns 
in her answers to both sisters — " For you know Sir Charles 

127 



128 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

lives to himself," till at length it passes into a proverb among 
the fair correspondents. This is not, however, an example of 
what I understand by living to one's-self, for Sir Charles Grandi- 
son was indeed always thinking of himself ; but by this phrase 
5 I mean never thinking at all about one's-self, any more than if 
there was no such person in existence. The character I speak 
of is as little of an egotist as possible : Richardson's great 
favourite was as much of one as possible. Some satirical critic 
has represented him in Elysium "bowing over the. faded hand 

lo of Lady Grandison " (Miss Byron that was) — he ought to have 
been represented bowing over his own hand, for he never 
admired any one but himself, and was the god of his own 
idolatry. Neither do I call it living to one's-self to retire into 
a desert (like the saints and martyrs of old) to be devoured by 

15 wild beasts, nor to descend into a cave to be considered as 
a hermit, nor to get to the top of a pillar or rock to do fanatic 
penance and be seen of all men. What I mean by living to 
one's-self is living in the world, as in it, not of it : it is as if no 
one knew there was such a person, and you wish no one to 

20 know it : it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of 
things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it ; to take a 
thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but 
not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it. 
It is such a life as a pure spirit might be supposed to lead, and 

25 such an interest as it might take in the affairs of men, calm, con- 
templative, passive, distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, 
smiling at their follies without bitterness, sharing their affections, 
but not troubled by their passions, not seeking their notice, nor 
once dreamt of by them. He who lives wisely to himself and 

30 to his own heart, looks at the busy world through the loop-holes 
of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray. " He hears 
the tumult, and is still." He is not able to mend it, nor willing 
to mar it. He sees enough in the universe to interest him with- 
out putting himself forward to try what he can do to fix the 



ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 1 29 

eyes of the universe upon him. Vain the attempt ! He reads 
the clouds, he looks at the stars, he watches the return of the 
seasons, the falling leaves of autumn, the perfumed breath of 
spring, starts with delight at the note of a thrush in a copse 
near him, sits by the fire, listens to the moaning of the wind, 5 
pores upon a book, or discourses the freezing hours away, or 
melts down hours to minutes in pleasing thought. All this while 
he is taken up with other things, forgetting himself. He relishes 
an author's style, without thinking of turning author. He is fond 
of looking at a print from an old picture in the room, without 10 
teasing himself to copy it. He does not fret himself to death 
with trying to be what he is not, or to do what he cannot. He 
hardly knows what he is capable of, and is not in the least 
concerned whether he shall ever make a figure in the world. 
He feels the truth of the lines — 1 5 

" The man whose eye is ever on himself, 
Doth look on one, the least of nature's works ; 
One who might move the wise man to that scorn 
Which wisdom holds unlawful ever " — 

he looks out of himself at the wide extended prospect of nature, 20 
and takes an interest beyond his narrow pretensions in general 
humanity. He is free as air, and independent as the wind. 
Woe be to him when he first begins to think what others say 
of him. While a man is contented with himself and his own 
resources, all is well. When he undertakes to play a part on 25 
the stage, and to persuade the world to think more about him 
than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he 
will find nothing but briars and thorns, vexation and disappoint- 
ment. I can speak a little to this point. For many years of 
my life I did nothing but think. I had nothing else to do but 30 
solve some knotty point, or dip in some abstruse author, or look 
at the sky, or wander by the pebbled sea-side — - 

" To see the children sporting on the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 



I30 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time to 
consider whatever occurred to me, and was in no hurry to give 
a sophistical answer to a question — there was no printer's 
devil waiting for me. I used to write a page or two perhaps in 
5 half a year ; and remember laughing heartily at the celebrated 
experimentalist Nicholson, who told me that in twenty years he 
had written as much as would make three hundred octavo 
volumes. If I was not a great author, I could read with ever 
fresh delight, " never ending, still beginning," and had no occa- 

10 sion to write a criticism when I had done. If I could not paint 
like Claude, I could admire " the witchery of the soft blue sky " 
as I walked out, and was satisfied with the pleasure it gave me. 
If I was dull, it gave me little concern : if I was lively, I 
indulged my spirits. I wished well to the world, and believed 

1 5 as favourably of it as I could. I was like a stranger in a foreign 
land, at which I looked with wonder, curiosity, and delight, 
without expecting to be an object of attention in return. I had 
no relations to the state, no duty to perform, no ties to bind 
me to others : I had neither friend nor mistress, wife or child. 

2o I lived in a world of contemplation, and not of action. 

This sort of dreaming existence is the best. He who quits it 
to go in search of realities, generally barters repose for repeated 
disappointments and vain regrets. His time, thoughts, and 
feelings are no longer at his own disposal. From that instant 

25 he does not survey the objects of nature as they are in them- 
selves, but looks asquint at them to see whether he cannot 
make them the instruments of his ambition, interest, or pleas- 
ure ; for a candid, undesigning, undisguised simplicity of char- 
acter, his views become jaundiced, sinister, and double : he takes 

30 no farther interest in the great changes of the world but as he 
has a paltry share in producing them : instead of opening his 
senses, his understanding, and his heart to the resplendent 
fabric of the universe, he holds a crooked mirror before his 
face, in which he may admire his own person and pretensions, 



ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 131 

and just glance his eye aside to see whether others are not 
admiring him too. He no more exists in the impression which 
" the fair variety of things " makes upon him, softened and 
subdued by habitual contemplation, but in the feverish sense of 
his own upstart self-importance. By aiming to fix, he is become 5 
the slave of opinion. He is a tool, a part of a machine that 
never stands still, and is sick and giddy with the ceaseless 
motion. He has no satisfaction but in the reflection of his own 
image in the public gaze, but in the repetition of his own name 
in the public ear. He himself is mixed up with, and spoils 10 
every thing. I wonder Buonaparte was not tired of the N. N.'s 
stuck all over the Louvre and throughout France. Goldsmith 
(as we all know) when in Holland went out into a balcony with 
some handsome Englishwomen, and on their being applauded 
by the spectators, turned round and said peevishly — "There 15 
are places where I also am admired." He could not give the 
craving appetite of an author's vanity one day's respite. I have 
seen a celebrated talker of our own time turn pale and go out 
of the room when a showy-looking girl has come into it, who 
for a moment divided the attention of his hearers. Infinite are 20 
the mortifications of the bare attempt to emerge from obscurity ; 
numberless the failures ; and greater and more galling still the 
vicissitudes and tormenting accompaniments of success — 

" Whose top to climb 

Is certain falling, or so slippery, that 25 

The fear's as bad as falling." 

" Would to God," exclaimed Oliver Cromwell, when he was at 
at any time thwarted by the Parliament, " that I had remained 
by my woodside to tend a flock of sheep, rather than have been 
thrust on such a government as this I " When Buonaparte got 30 
into his carriage to proceed on his Russian expedition, care- 
lessly twirling his glove, and singing the air — " Malbrook to 
the wars is going " — he did not think of the tumble he has got 
since, the shock of which no one could have stood but himself. 



132 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

We see and hear chiefly of the favourites of Fortune and the 
Muse, of great generals, of first-rate actors, of celebrated poets. 
These are at the head ; we are struck with the glittering emi- 
nence on which they stand, and long to set out on the same 
5 tempting career : — not thinking how many discontented half-pay 
lieutenants are in vain seeking promotion all their lives, and 
obliged to put up with " the insolence of office, and the spurns 
which patient merit of the unworthy takes ; " how many half- 
starved strolling-players are doomed to penury and tattered 

lo robes in country places, dreaming to the last of a London en- 
gagement ; how many wretched daubers shiver and shake in the 
ague-fit of alternate hopes and fears, waste and pine away in 
the atrophy of genius, or else turn drawing-masters, picture- 
cleaners, or newspaper critics ; how many hapless poets have 

15 sighed out their souls to the Muse in vain, without ever getting 
their effusions farther known than the Poet's-Corner of a 
country newspaper, and looked and looked with grudging, wist- 
ful eyes at the envious horizon that bounded their provincial 
fame ! Suppose an actor, for instance, " after the heart-aches and 

20 the thousand natural pangs that flesh is heir to," does get at the 
top of his profession, he can no longer bear a rival near the 
throne ; to be second or only equal to another, is to be nothing : 
he starts at the prospect of a successor, and retains the 
mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp : perhaps as he is 

25 about to seize the first place which he has long had in his eye, 
an unsuspected competitor steps in before him, and carries off 
the prize, leaving him to commence his irksome toil again : he 
is in a state of alarm at every appearance or rumour of the 
appearance of a new actor : " a mouse that takes up its lodging 

30 in a cat's ear " ^ has a mansion of peace to him : he dreads 
every hint of an objection, and least of all, can forgive praise 
mingled with censure : to doubt is to insult, to discriminate is 
to degrade : he dare hardly look into a criticism unless some 

1 Webster's Duchess of Malfy. 



ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 133 

one has tasted it for him, to see that there is no offence in it : 
if he does not draw crowded houses every night, he can neither 
eat nor sleep ; or if all these terrible inflictions are removed, and 
he can '' eat his meal in peace," he then becomes surfeited with 
applause and dissatisfied with his profession : he wants to be 5 
something else, to be distinguished as an author, a collector, a 
classical scholar, a man of sense and information, and weighs 
every word he utters, and half reti'acts it before he utters it, 
lest if he were to make the smallest slip of the tongue, it should 

get buzzed abroad that Mr. was o?iIy clever as an actor ! 10 

If ever there was a man who did not derive more pain than 
pleasure from his vanity, that man, says Rousseau, was no 
other than a fool. A country-gentleman near Taunton spent 
his whole life in making some hundreds of wretched copies 
of second-rate pictures, which were bought up at his death by a 15 
neighbouring Baronet, to whom 

" Some demon whisper'd, L •, have a taste ! " 

A little Wilson in an obscure corner escaped the man of vitiii, 
and was carried off by a Bristol picture-dealer for three guineas, 
while the muddled copies of the owner of the mansion (with 20 
the frames) fetched thirty, forty, sixty, a hundred ducats a piece. 
A friend of mine found a very fine Canaletti in a state of 
strange disfigurement, with the upper part of the sky smeared 
over and fantastically variegated with English clouds ; and on 
inquiring of the person to whom it belonged whether some- 25 
thing had not been done to it, received for answer " that a 
gentleman, a great artist in the neighbourhood, had retouched 
some parts of it." What infatuation ! Yet this candidate for 
the honours of the pencil might probably have made a jovial 
fox-hunter or respectable justice of the peace, if he could only 30 
have stuck to what nature and fortune intended him for. 

Miss can by no means be persuaded to quit the boards 

of the theatre at , a little country town in the West of 



134 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

England. Her salary has been abridged, her person ridiculed, 
her acting laughed at ; nothing will serve — she is determined to 
be an actress, and scorns to return to her former business as a 
milliner. Shall I go on ? An actor in the same company was 

5 visited by the apothecary of the place in an ague-fit, who on 
asking his landlady as to his way of life, was told that the poor 
gentleman was very quiet and gave little trouble, that he gen- 
erally had a plate of mashed potatoes for his dinner, and lay in 
bed most of his time, repeating his part. A young couple, every 

lo way amiable and deserving, were to have been married, and a 
benefit-play was bespoke by the officers of the regiment quar- 
tered there, to defray the expense of a license and of the 
wedding-ring, but the profits of the night did not amount to the 
necessary sum, and they have, I fear, " virgined it e'er since ! " 

15 Oh for the pencil of Hogarth or Wilkie to give a view of the 

comic strength of the company at -, drawn up in battle-array 

in the Clandestine Marriage, with a coup-d'ceil of the pit, boxes, 
and gallery, to cure for ever the love of the ideal ^ and the de- 
sire to shine and make holiday in the eyes of others, instead 

20 of retiring within ourselves and keeping our wishes and our 
thoughts at home ! 

Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and 
marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happi- 
ness in the hands of others ! Most of the friends I have seen 

25 have turned out the bitterest enemies, or cold, uncomfortable 
acquaintances. Old companions are like meats served up too 
often that lose their relish and their wholesomeness. He who 
looks at beauty to admire, to adore it, who reads of its wondrous 
power in novels, in poems, or in plays, is not unwise : but let 

30 no man fall in love, for from that moment he is " the baby of a 
girl." I like very well to repeat such lines as these in the play 
Mirandola — 

" With what a waving air she goes 

Along the corridor. How hke a fawn ! 



ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF I35 

Yet statelier. Hark ! No sound, however soft, 
Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads, 
But every motion of her shape doth seem 
Hallowed by silence " 

but however beautiful the description, defend me from meeting 5 
with the original ! 

." The fly that sips treacle 
Is lost in the sweets ; 
So he that tastes woman 

Ruin meets." 10 

The song is Gay's, not mine, and a bitter-sweet it is. — How 
few out of the infinite number of those that marry and are given 
in marriage, wed with those they would prefer to all the world ; 
nay, how far the greater proportion are joined together by mere 
motives of convenience, accident, recommendation of friends, 15 
or indeed not unfrequently by the very fear of the event, by 
repugnance and a sort of fatal fascination : yet the tie is for life, 
not to be shaken off but with disgrace or death : a man no longer 
lives to himself, but is a body (as well as mind) chained to an- 
other, in spite of himself — 20 

" Like life and death in disproportion met." 

So Milton (perhaps from his own experience) makes Adam 
exclaim in the vehemence of his despair, 

" For either 
He never shall find out fit mate, but such 25 

As some misfortune brings him or mistake; 
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain 
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gain'd 
By a far worse ; or if she love, withheld 

By parents ; or his happiest choice too late 30 

Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound 
To a fell adversary, his hate and shame ; 
Which infinite calamity shall cause 
To human life, and household peace confound." 

If love at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated by kind 35 
offices ; if the fondest affection were not so often repaid and 



136 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

chilled by indifference and scorn ; if so many lovers both before 
and since the madman in Don Quixote had not " worshipped a 
statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert ;" if friendship 
were lasting ; if merit were renown, and renown were health, 
5 riches, and long life ; or if the homage of the world were paid 
to conscious worth and the true aspirations after excellence, in- 
stead of its gaudy signs and outward trappings ; then indeed I 
might be of opinion that it is better to live to others than one's- 
self : but as the case stands, I incline to the negative side of 
10 the question.^ — 

"' I have not loved the world, nor the world me ; 
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd 
To its idolatries a patient knee — 
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles — nor cried aloud 
15 In worship of an echo ; in the crowd 

They could not deem me one of such ; I stood 

Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud 

Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, 

Had I not filed my mind which thus itself subdued. 

20 I have not loved the world, nor the world me — 

But let us part fair foes; I do believe, 
Though I have found them not, that there may be 
Words which are things — hopes which will not deceive, 
And virtues which are merciful nor weave 

25 Snares for the failing : I would also deem 

O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve ; 
That two, or one, are almost what they seem — 
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream." 

Sweet verse embalms the spirit of sour misanthropy : but 

30 woe betide the ignoble prose-writer who should thus dare to 

compare notes with the world, or tax it roundly with imposture. 

1 Shenstone and Gray were two men, one of whom pretended to live to himself, 
and the other really did so. Gray shrunk from the public gaze (he did not even 
like his portrait to be prefixed to his works) into his own thoughts and indolent 
musings ; Shenstone affected privacy that he might be sought out by the world ; 
the one courted retirement in order to enjoy leisure and repose, as the other co- 
quetted with it, merely to be interrupted with the importunity of visitors and the 
flatteries of absent friends. 



ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 137 

If I had sufficient provocation to rail at the public, as Ben 
Jonson did at the audience in the Prologues to his plays, I think 
I should do it in good set terms, nearly as follows. There is 
not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envi- 
ous, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of 5 
cowards, for it is afraid of itself. From its unwieldy, overgrown 
dimensions, it dreads the least opposition to it, and shakes like 
isinglass at the touch of a finger. It starts at its own shadow, 
like the man in the Hartz mountains, and trembles at the men- 
tion of its own name. It has a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, 10 
with ears erect and sleepless eyes. It stands " listening its fears." 
It is so in awe of its own opinion, that it never dares to form 
any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behind- 
hand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the 
sound of its own voice. The idea of what the public will think 15 
prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell 
on the exercise of private judgment, so that in short the public 
ear is at the mercy of the first impudent pretender who chooses 
to fill it with noisy assertions, or false surmises, or secret whis- 
pers. What is said by one is heard by all ; the supposition that 20 
a thing is known to all the world makes all the world believe it, 
and the hollow repetition of a vague report drowns the " still, 
small voice " of reason. We may believe or know that what is 
said is not true : but we know or fancy that others believe it — 
we dare not contradict or are too indolent to dispute with them, 25 
and therefore give up our internal, and, as we think, our solitary 
conviction to a sound without substance, without proof, and often 
without meaning. Nay more, we may believe and know not 
only that a thing is false, but that others believe and know it to 
be so, that they are quite as much in the secret of the impos- 30 
ture as we are, that they see the puppets at work, the nature of 
the machinery, and yet if any one has the art or power to get the 
management of it, he shall keep possession of the public ear by 
virtue of a cant-phrase or nickname ; and by dint of effrontery 



138 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and perseverance make all the world believe and repeat what 
all the world know to be false. The ear is quicker than the 
judgment. We know that certain things are said ; by that cir- 
cumstance alone, we know that they produce a certain effect on 
5 the imagination of others, and we conform to their prejudices 
by mechanical sympathy, and for want of sufficient spirit to 
differ with them. So far then is public opinion from resting on 
a broad and solid basis, as the aggregate of thought and feeling 
in a community, that it is slight and shallow and variable to the 

10 last degree — the bubble of the moment — so that we may safely 
say the public is the dupe of public opinion, not its parent. The 
public is pusillanimous and cowardly, because it is weak. It 
knows itself to be a great dunce, and that it has no opinions 
but upon suggestion. Yet it is unwilling to appear in leading- 

1 5 strings, and would have it thought that its decisions are as wise 
as they are weighty. It is hasty in taking up its favourites, 
more hasty in laying them aside, lest it should be supposed de- 
ficient in sagacity in either case. It is generally divided into two 
strong parties, each of which will allow neither common sense 

20 nor common honesty to the other side. It reads the Edinburgh 
and Quarterly Reviews, and believes them both — or if there is 
a doubt, malice turns the scale. Taylor and Hessey told me that 
they had sold nearly two editions of the Characters of Shake- 
spear's Plays in about three months, but that after the Quarterly 

25 Review of them came out, they never sold another copy. The 
public, enlightened as they are, must have known the meaning 
of that attack as well as those who made it. It was not igno- 
rance then but cowardice, that led them to give up their own 
opinion. A crew of mischievous critics at Edinburgh having 

30 affixed the epithet of the Cockney School to one or two writers 
bom in the metropolis, all the people in London became afraid 
of looking into their works, lest they too should be convicted of 
cockneyism. Oh brave public ! This epithet proved too much 
for one of the writers in question, and stuck like a barbed arrow 



ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 1 39 

in his heart. Poor Keats ! What was sport to the town was 
death to him. Young, sensitive, delicate, he was like 

" A bud bit by an envious worm, 
Ere he could spread his sweet leaves to the air, 
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun " — 5 

and unable to endure the miscreant cry and idiot laugh, with- 
drew to sigh his last breath in foreign climes. — - The public is 
as envious and ungrateful as it is ignorant, stupid, and pigeon- 

livered — 

"A huge-sized monster of ingratitudes." 10 

It reads, it admires, it extols only because it is the fashion, 
not from any love of the subject or the man. It cries you up 
or runs you down out of mere caprice and levity. If you have 
pleased it, it is jealous of its own involuntary acknowledgment 
of merit, and seizes the first opportunity, the first shabby pre- 15 
text, to pick a quarrel with you, and be quits once more. Every 
petty caviller is erected into a judge, every tale-bearer is im- 
plicitly believed. Every little low paltry creature that gaped and 
wondered only because others did so, is glad to find you (as 
he thinks) on a level with himself. An author is not then, after 20 
all, a being of another order. Public admiration is forced, and 
goes against the grain. Public obloquy is cordial and sincere : 
every individual feels his own importance in it. They give you 
up bound hand and foot into the power of your accusers. To 
attempt to defend yourself is a high crime and misdemeanour, 25 
a contempt of court, an extreme piece of impertinence. Or if 
you prove every charge unfounded, they never think of retract- 
ing their error, or making you amends. It would be a compro- 
mise of their dignity ; they consider themselves as the party 
injured, and resent your innocence as an imputation on their 30 
judgment. The celebrated Bub Doddington, when out of favour 
at court, said "he would not justify before his sovereign : it was 
for Majesty to be displeased, and for him to believe himself in 



I40 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

the wrong ! " The public are not quite so modest. People 
already begin to talk of the Scotch Novels as overrated. How 
then can common authors be supposed to keep their heads long 
above water ? As a general rule, all those who live by the public 
S starve, and are made a bye-word and a standing jest into the 
bargain. Posterity is no better (not a bit more enlightened or 
more liberal), except that you are no longer in their power, and 
that the voice of common fame saves them the trouble of decid- 
ing on your claims. The public now are the posterity of Milton 

10 and Shakespear. Our posterity will be the living public of a 
future generation. When a man is dead, they put money in his 
coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anni- 
versary of his birth-day in set speeches. Would they take any 
notice of him if he were living .'' No ! — I was complaining of 

15 this to a Scotchman who had been attending a dinner and a 
subscription to raise a monument to Burns. He replied he 
would sooner subscribe twenty pounds to his monument than 
have given it him while living ; so that if the poet were to come 
to life again, he would treat him just as he was treated in fact. 

20 This was an honest Scotchman. What he said, the rest would do. 
Enough : my soul, turn from them, and let me try to regain 
the obscurity and quiet that I love, " far from the madding 
strife," in some sequestered corner of my own, or in some far- 
distant land ! In the latter case, I might carry with me as a 

25 consolation the passage in Bolingbroke's Reflections on Exile, 
in which he describes in glowing colours the resources which a 
man may always find within himself, and of which the world 
cannot deprive him. 

'' Believe me, the providence of God has established such an 

30 order in the world, that of all which belongs to us, the least 
valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever 
is best is safest ; lies out of the reach of human power ; can 
neither be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beauti- 
ful work of nature, the world. Such is the mind of man, which 



ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF I41 

contemplates and admires the world whereof it makes the 
noblest part. These are inseparably ours, and as long as we 
remain in one we shall enjoy the other. Let us march therefore 
intrepidly wherever we are led by the course of human accidents. 
Wherever they lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by 5 
them, we shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers. We shall 
feel the same revolution of seasons, and the same sun and 
moon ^ will guide the course of our year. The same azure vault, 
bespangled with stars, will be every where spread over our heads. 
There is no part of the world from whence we may not admire 10 
those planets which roll, like ours, in different orbits round the 
same central sun ; from whence we may not discover an object 
still more stupendous, that army of fixed stars hung up in the 
immense space of the universe, innumerable suns whose beams 
enlighten and cherish the unknown worlds which roll around 15 
them ; and whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as 
these, whilst my soul is thus raised up to heaven, imports me 
little what ground I tread upon." 

1 " Plut. of Banishment. He compares those who cannot live out of their own 
country, to the simple people who fancied the moon of Athens was a finer moon 
than that of Corinth. 

Labcntcm ccelo qua ducHls annum. 

Virg. Georg." 



ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 

I have naturally but little imagination, and am not of a very 
sanguine turn of mind. I have some desire to enjoy the present 
good, and some fondness for the past ; but I am not at all given 
to building castles in the air, nor to look forward with much 

5 confidence or hope to the brilliant illusions held out by the future. 
Hence I have perhaps been led to form a theory, which is very 
contrary to the common notions and feelings on the subject, 
and which I will here try to explain as well as I can. — When 
Sterne in the Sentimental Journey told the French Minister that 

10 if the French people had a fault, it was that they were too seri- 
ous, the latter replied that if that was his opinion, he must 
defend it with all his might, for he would have all the world 
against him ; so I shall have enough to do to get well through 
the present argument. 

15 I cannot see, then, any rational or logical ground for that 
mighty difference in the value which mankind generally set upon 
the past and future, as if the one was every thing and the other 
nothing, of no consequence whatever. On the other hand, I 
conceive that the past is as real and substantial a part of our 

20 being, that it is as much a bona fide, undeniable consideration 
in the estimate of human life, as the future can possibly be. To 
say that the past is of no importance, unworthy of a moment's 
regard, because it has gone by, and is no longer any thing, is an 
argument that cannot be held to any purpose : for if the past 

25 has ceased to be, and is therefore to be accounted nothing in 
the scale of good or evil, the future is yet to come, and has 
never been any thing. Should any one choose to assert that the 
present only is of any value in a strict and positive sense, because 

142 



ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 143 

that alone has a real existence, that we should seize the instant 
good and give all else to the winds, I can understand what he 
means (though perhaps he does not himself) ^ : but I cannot 
comprehend how this distinction between that which has a down- 
right and sensible, and that which has only a remote and airy 5 
existence, can be applied to establish the preference of the future 
over the past ; for both are in this point of view equally ideal, 
absolutely nothing, except as they are conceived of by the mind's 
eye, and are thus rendered present to the thoughts and feelings. 
Nay, the one is even more imaginary, a more fantastic creature 10 
of the brain than the other, and the interest we take in it more 
shadowy and gratuitous ; for the future, on which we lay so 
much stress, may never come to pass at all, that is, may never 
be embodied into actual existence in the whole course of events, 
whereas the past has certainly existed once, has received the 15 
stamp of truth, and left an image of itself behind. It is so far 
then placed beyond the possibility of doubt, or as the poet 

has it, 

"' Those joys are lodg'd beyond the reach of fate." 

It is not, however, attempted to be denied that though the future 20 
is nothing at present, and has no immediate interest while we 
are speaking, yet it is of the utmost consequence in itself, and 
of the utmost interest to the individual, because it will have a 
real existence, and we have an idea of it as existing in time to 
come. Well then, the past also has no real existence ; the actual 25 
sensation and the interest belonging to it are both fled ; but it 
has had a real existence, and we can still call up a vivid recol- 
lection of it as having once been ; and therefore, by parity of 
reasoning, it is not a thing perfectly insignificant in itself, nor 
wholly indifferent to the mind, whether it ever was or not. Oh 30 

1 If we take away from the present the moment that is just gone by and the 
moment that is next to come, how much of it will be left for this plain, practical 
theory to rest upon ? Their solid basis of sense and reality will reduce itself to a 
pin's point, a hair-line, on which our moral balance-masters will have some diffi- 
culty to maintain their footing without falling over on either side. 



144 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

no ! Far from it ! Let us not rashly quit our hold upon the 
past, when perhaps there may be little else left to bind us to 
existence. Is it nothing to have been, and to have been happy 
or miserable ? Or is it a matter of no moment to think whether 
5 I have been one or the other ? Do I delude myself, do I build 
upon a shadow or a dream, do I dress up in the gaudy garb of 
idleness and folly a pure fiction, with nothing answering to it 
in the universe of things and the records of truth, when I look 
back with fond delight or with tender regret to that which was 
lo at one time to me my all, when I revive the glowing image of 
some bright reality, 

" The thoughts of which can never from my heart " ? 

Do I then muse on nothing, do I bend my eyes on nothing, 
when I turn back in fancy to "those suns and skies so pure" that 
15 lighted up my early path? Is it to think of nothing, to set an 
idle value upon nothing, to think of all that has happened to 
me, and of all that can ever interest me ? Or, to use the lan- 
guage of a fine poet (who is himself among my earliest and not 
least painful recollections) — 

20 " What though the radiance which was once so bright 

Be now for ever vanish'd from my sight, 
Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow'r " — 

yet am I mocked with a lie, when I venture to think of it ? Or 
25 do I not drink in and breathe again the air of heavenly truth, 
when I but " retrace its footsteps, and its skirts far off adore " ? 
I cannot say with the same poet — 

" And see how dark the backward stream, 
A little moment past so smiling" — 

30 for it is the past that gives me most delight and most assurance 
of reality. What to me constitutes the great charm of the Con- 
fessions of Rousseau is their turning so much upon this feeling. 
He seems to gather up the past moments of his being like drops 



ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 145 

of honey-dew to distil a precious liquor from them ; his alternate 
pleasures and pains are the bead-roll that he tells over, and piously 
worships ; he makes a rosary of the flowers of hope and fancy 
that strewed his earliest years. When he begins the last of the 
Reveries of a Solitary Walker, " // j a a7(Joii?-d7iiii, jour des 5 
Paqucs Fleuris, cinqua7ite ans depuis que fai premier vu Madame 
Warens," what a yearning of the soul is implied in that short 
sentence ! Was all that had happened to him, all that he had 
thought and felt in that sad interval of time, to be accounted 
nothing ? Was that long, dim, faded retrospect of years happy 10 
or miserable, a blank that was not to make his eyes fail and his 
heart faint within him in trying to grasp all that had once filled 
it and that had since vanished, because it was not a prospect 
into futurity ? Was he wrong in finding more to interest him in 
it than in the next fifty years — which he did not live to see ; 1 5 
or if he had, what then ? Would they have been worth thinking 
of, compared with the times of his youth, of his first meeting with 
Madame Warens, with those times which he has traced with such 
truth and pure delight " in our heart's tables " ? When " all the 
life of life was flown," was he not to live the first and best part 20 
of it over again, and once more be all that he then was ? — Ye 
woods that crown the clear lone brow of Norman Court, why 
do I revisit ye so oft, and feel a soothing consciousness of your 
presence, but that your high tops waving in the wind recal to 
me the hours and years that are for ever fled, that ye renew 25 
in ceaseless murmurs the story of long-cherished hopes and bitter 
disappointment, that in your solitudes and tangled wilds I can 
wander and lose myself as I wander on and am lost in the soli- 
tude of my own heart ; and that as your rustling branches give 
the loud blast to the waste below — borne on the thoughts of 30 
other years, I can look down with patient anguish at the cheer- 
less desolation which I feel within ! Without that face pale as 
the primrose with hyacinthine locks, for ever shunning and for 
ever haunting me, mocking my waking thoughts as in a dream, 



146 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

without that smile which my heart could never turn to scorn, 
without those eyes dark with their own lustre, still bent on mine, 
and drawing the soul into their liquid mazes hke a sea of love, 
without that name trembling in fancy's ear, without that form 
5 gliding before me like Oread or Dryad in fabled groves, what 
should I do, how pass away the listless leaden-footed hours? 
Then wave, wave on, ye woods of Tuderley, and lift your high 
tops in the air ; my sighs and vows uttered by your mystic voice 
breathe into me my former being, and enable me to bear the 

10 thing I am ! — The objects that we have known in better days 
are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and 
give us strength to await our future lot. The future is like a 
dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view : the 
past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of 

1 5 unfading interest. What is it in fact that we recur to of tenest ? 
What subjects do we think or talk of ? Not the ignorant future, 
but the well-stored past. Othello, the Moor of Venice, amused 
himself and his hearers at the house of Signor Brabantio by 
" running through the story of his life even from his boyish 

20 days ; " and oft " beguiled them of their tears, when he did 
speak of some disastrous stroke which his youth suffered." 
This plan of ingratiating himself would not have answered, if 
the past had been, like the contents of an old almanac, of no 
use but to be thrown aside and forgotten. What a blank, for 

25 instance, does the history of the world for the next six thousand 
years present to the mind, compared with that of the last ! All 
that strikes the imagination or excites any interest in the mighty 
scene is w/iaf has been ! ^ 

1 A treatise on the Millennium is dull ; but who was ever weary of reading the 
fables of the Golden Age ? On my once observing I should like to have been 
Claude, a person said, " they should not, for that then by this time it would have 
been all over with them." As if it could possibly signify when we live (save and 
excepting the present minute), or as if the value of human life decreased or in- 
creased with successive centuries. At that rate, we had better have our life still 
to come at some future period, and so postpone our existence century after 
century ad infimlnm. 



ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 147 

Neither in itself then, nor as a subject of general contem- 
plation, has the future any advantage over the past. But with 
respect to our grosser passions and pursuits it has. As far as 
regards the appeal to the understanding or the imagination, the 
past is just as good, as real, of as much intrinsic and ostensible 5 
value as the future : but there is another principle in the human 
mind, the principle of action or will ; and of this the past has 
no hold, the future engrosses it entirely to itself. It is this 
strong lever of the affections that gives so powerful a bias 
to our sentiments on this subject, and violently transposes the 10 
natural order of our associations. We regret the pleasures we 
have lost, and eagerly anticipate those which are to come : 
we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we have 
escaped {Posthcec meminisse juvabif) — and dread future pain. 
The good that is past is in this sense like money that is spent, 15 
which is of no further use, and about which we give ourselves 
little concern. The good we expect is like a store yet untouched, 
and in the enjoyment of which we promise ourselves infinite 
gratification. What has happened to us we think of no conse- 
quence : what is to happen to us, of the greatest. Why so ? 20 
Simply because the one is still in our power, and the other not 
— because the efforts of the will to bring any object to pass 
or to prevent it strengthen our attachment or aversion to that 
object — because the pains and attention bestowed upon any 
thing add to our interest in it, and because the habitual and 25 
earnest pursuit of any end redoubles the ardour of our expec- 
tations, and converts the speculative and indolent satisfaction we 
might otherwise feel in it into real passion. Our regrets, anxiety, 
and wishes are thrown away upon the past : but the insisting 
on the importance of the future is of the utmost use in aiding 30 
our resolutions, and stimulating our exertions. If the future were 
no more amenable to our wills than the past ; if our precautions, 
our sanguine schemes, our hopes and fears were of as little 
avail in the one case as the other ; if we could neither soften 



148 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

our minds to pleasure, nor steel our fortitude to the resistance 
of pain beforehand ; if all objects drifted along by us like straws 
or pieces of wood in a river, the will being purely passive, and 
as little able to avert the future as to arrest the past, we should 
5 in that case be equally indifferent to both ; that is, we should con- 
sider each as they affected the thoughts and imagination with 
certain sentiments of approbation or regret, but without the 
importunity of action, the irritation of the will, throwing the 
whole weight of passion and prejudice into one scale, and leav- 

10 ing the other quite empty. While the blow is coming, we prepare 
to meet it, we think to ward off or break its force, we arm our- 
selves with patience to endure what cannot be avoided, we agitate 
ourselves with fifty needless alarms about it ; but when the blow 
is struck, the pang is over, the struggle is no longer necessary, 

1 5 and we cease to harass or torment ourselves about it more than 
we can help. It is not that the one belongs to the future and 
the other to time past ; but that the one is a subject of action, 
of uneasy apprehension, of strong passion, and that the other 
has passed wholly out of the sphere of action, into the region of 

20 "Calm contemplation and majestic pains." ^ 

It would not give a man more concern to know that he should 
be put to the rack a year hence, than to recollect that he had 
been put to it a year ago, but that he hopes to avoid the one, 
whereas he must sit down patiently under the consciousness of 
25 the other. In this hope he wears himself out in vain struggles 
with fate, and puts himself to the rack of his imagination every 
day he has to live in the mean while. When the event is so 
remote or so independent of the will as to set aside the necessity 
of immediate action, or to baffle all attempts to defeat it, it gives 

1 In like manner, though we know that an event must have taken place at a 
distance, long before we can hear the result, yet as long as we remain in igno- 
rance of it, we irritate ourselves about it, and suffer all the agonies of suspense, 
as if it was still to come ; but as soon as our uncertainty is removed, our fretful 
impatience vanishes, we resign ourselves to fate, and make up our minds to what 
has happened as well as we can. 



ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 149 

us little more disturbance or emotion than if it had already taken 
place, or were something to happen in another state of being, 
or to an indifferent person. Criminals are observed to grow 
more anxious as their trial approaches ; but after their sentence 
is passed, they become tolerably resigned, and generally sleep 5 
sound the night before its execution. 

It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach 
more or less importance to past and future events, according 
as they are more or less engaged in action and the busy scenes 
of life. Those who have a fortune to make or are in pursuit of 10 
rank and power think litde of the past, for it does not contrib- 
ute greatly to their views : those who have nothing to do but to 
think, take nearly the same interest in the past as in the future. 
The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real as that 
of the other. The season of hope has an end ; but the remem- 15 
brance of it is left. The past still lives in the memory of those 
who have leisure to look back upon the way that they have trod, 
and can from it " catch glimpses that may make them less for- 
lorn." The turbulence of action, and uneasiness of desire, must 
point to the future : it is only in the quiet innocence of shep- 20 
herds, in the simplicity of pastoral ages, that a tomb was found 
with this inscription — "I also was an Arcadian ! " 

Though I by no means think that our habitual attachment to 
life is in exact proportion to the value of the gift, yet I am not 
one of those splenetic persons who affect to think it of no value 25 
at all. Que pen de chose est la vie humaine — is an exclamation 
in the mouths of moralists and philosophers, to which I cannot 
agree. It is little, it is short, it is not worth having, if we take 
the last hour, and leave out all that has gone before, which has 
been one way of looking at the subject. Such calculators seem 30 
to say that life is nothing when it is over, and that may in their 
sense be true. If the old rule — Respice finem — were to be 
made absolute, and no one could be pronounced fortunate till 
the day of his death, there are few among us whose existence 



I50 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

would, upon those conditions, be much to be envied. But this 
is not a fair view of the case. A man's life is his whole life, 
not the last glimmering snuff of the candle ; and this, I say, 
is considerable, and not a little matter^ whether we regard its 
5 pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish conclusion to the 
contrary from our own superannuated desires or forgetful in- 
difference is about as reasonable as to say, a man never was 
young because he has grown old, or never lived because he is 
now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not 

lo depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building 
to be judged of from the last stone that is added to it. It is 
neither the first nor last hour of our existence, but the space 
that parts these two — not our exit nor our entrance upon the 
stage, but what we do, feel, and think while there — that we 

IS are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed it 
would be easy to shew that it is the very extent of human life, 
the infinite number of things contained in it, its contradictory 
and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to 
another, the hours, months, years spent in one fond pursuit 

20 after another ; that it is, in a word, the length of our common 
journey and the quantity of events crowded into it, that, baf- 
fling the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide from our 
memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own perspective. It is 
too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing ! It is a speck in 

25 our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough to hold 
its striking groups, its endless subjects 1 It is light as vanity, 
and yet if all its weary moments, if all its head and heart aches 
were compressed into one, what fortitude would not be over- 
whelmed with the blow 1 What a huge heap, a " huge, dumb 

30 heap," of wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing 
hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is composed of ! How many 
ideas and trains of sentiment, long and deep and intense, often 
pass through the mind in only one day's thinking or reading, 
for instance ! How many such days are there in a year, how 



ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 151 

many years in a long life, still occupied with something inter- 
esting, still recalling some old impression, still recurring to some 
difficult question and making progress in it, every step accom- 
panied with a sense of power, and every moment conscious of 
" the high endeavour or the glad success ; " for the mind seizes 5 
only on that which keeps it employed, and is wound up to a 
certain pitch of pleasurable excitement or lively solicitude, by 
the necessity of its own nature. The division of the map of life 
into the component parts is beautifully made by King Henry VI. 

"' Oh God ! methinks it were a happy life 10 

To be no better than a homely swain, 
To sit upon a hill as I do now, 
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, 
Thereby to see the minutes how they run ; 
How many make the hour full complete, 15 

How many hours bring about the day, 
How many days will finish up the year. 
How many years a mortal man may live : 
When this is known, then to divide the times ; 
So many hours must I tend my flock, 20 

So many hours must I take my rest, 
So many hours must I contemplate, 
So many hours must I sport myself; 
So many days my ewes have been with young. 
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean, 25 

So many months ere I shall shear the fleece : 
So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years 
Past over to the end they were created, 
Would bring grey hairs unto a quiet grave." 

I myself am neither a king nor a shepherd : books have been 30 
my fleecy charge, and my thoughts have been my subjects. 
But these have found me sufficient employment at the time, 
and enough to think of for the time to come. 

The passions contract and warp the natural progress of life. 
They paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny 35 
and caprice. This makes the difference between the laughing 
innocence of childhood, the pleasantness of youth, and the 



152 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

crabbedness of age. A load of cares lies like a weight of guilt 
upon the mind : so that a man of business often has all the air, 
the distraction and restlessness and hurry of feeling of a criminal. 
A knowledge of the world takes away the freedom and simplicity 
5 of thought as effectually as the contagion of its example. The 
artlessness and candour of our early years are open to all impres- 
sions alike, because the mind is not clogged and pre-occupied 
with other objects. Our pleasures and our pains come single, 
make room for one another, and the spring of the mind is fresh 

lo and unbroken, its aspect clear and unsullied. Hence " the tear 
forgot as soon as shed, the sunshine of the breast." But as we 
advance farther, the will gets greater head. We form violent 
antipathies, and indulge exclusive preferences. We make up our 
minds to some one thing, and if we cannot have that, will have 

IS nothing. We are wedded to opinion, to fancy, to prejudice; 
which destroys the soundness of our judgments and the serenity 
and buoyancy of our feelings. The chain of habit coils itself 
round the heart, like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it. It grows 
rigid and callous ; and for the softness and elasticity of childhood, 

20 full of proud flesh and obstinate tumours. The violence and per- 
versity of our passions comes in more and more to overlay our 
natural sensibility and well-grounded affections ; and we screw 
ourselves up to aim only at those things which are neither desir- 
able nor practicable. Thus life passes away in the feverish irrita- 

25 tion of pursuit and the certainty of disappointment. By degrees, 
nothing but this morbid state of feeling satisfies us : and all 
common pleasures and cheap amusements are sacrificed to the 
demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. The machine is 
overwrought : the parching heat of the veins dries up and 

30 withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy ; and any pause, 
any release from the rack of ecstacy on which we are stretched, 
seems more insupportable than the pangs -which we endure. We 
are suspended between tormenting desires, and the horrors of 
ennui. The impulse of the will, like the wheels of a carriage 



ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 1 53 

going down hill, becomes too strong for the driver, reason, and 
cannot be stopped nor kept within bounds. Some idea, some 
fancy, takes possession of the brain ; and however ridiculous, 
however distressing, however ruinous, haunts us by a sort of 
fascination through life. 5 

Not only is this principle of excessive irritability to be seen at 
work in our more turbulent passions and pursuits, but even in 
the formal study of arts and sciences, the same thing takes place, 
and undermines the repose and happiness of life. The eagerness 
of pursuit overcomes the satisfaction to result from the accom- 10 
plishment. The mind is overstrained to attain its purpose ; and 
when it is attained, the ease and alacrity necessary to enjoy it 
are gone. The irritation of action does not cease and go down 
with the occasion for it ; but we are first uneasy to get to the 
end of our work, and then uneasy for want of something to do. 15 
The ferment of the brain does not of itself subside into pleasure 
and soft repose. Hence the disposition to strong stimuli observ- 
able in persons of much intellectual exertion to allay and carry 
off the over-excitement. The improvisatori poets (it is recorded 
by Spence in his Anecdotes of Pope) cannot sleep after an eve- 20 
ning's continued display of their singular and difficult art. The 
rhymes keep running in their head in spite of themselves, and 
will not let them rest. Mechanics and labouring people never 
know what to do with themselves on a Sunday, though they 
return to their work with greater spirit for the relief, and look 25 
forward to it with pleasure all the week. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
was never comfortable out of his painting-room, and died of 
chagrin and regret, because he could not paint on to the last 
moment of his life. He used to say that he could go on 
retouching a picture for ever, as long as it stood on his 30 
easel ; but as soon as it was once fairly out of the house, 
he never wished to see it again. An ingenious artist of our 
own time has been heard to declare, that if ever the Devil 
got him into his clutches, he would set him to copy his own 



154 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

pictures. Thus the secure, self-complacent retrospect to what 
is done is nothing, while the anxious, uneasy looking forward 
to what is to come is every thing. We are afraid to dwell upon 
the past, lest it should retard our future progress ; the indul- 
gence of ease is fatal to excellence ; and to succeed in life, 
we lose the ends of being ! 



ON FAMILIAR STYLE 

It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake 
a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without 
affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is noth- 
ing that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of 
expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects 5 
not only all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and 
loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to take the first 
word that offers, but the best word in commori use ; it is not to 
throw words together in any combinations we please, but to 
follow and avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language. 10 
To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as 
any one would speak in common conversation, who had a thor- 
ough command and choice of words, or wHo could discourse with 
ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and orator- 
ical flourishes. Or to give another illustration, to write naturally 15 
is the same thing in regard to common conversation, as to read 
naturally is in regard to common speech. It does not follow that 
it is an easy thing to give the true accent and inflection to the 
words you utter, because you do not attempt to rise above the 
level of ordinary life and colloquial speaking. You do not assume 20 
indeed the solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone of stage-declama- 
tion : neither are you at liberty to gabble on at a venture, with- 
out emphasis or discretion, or to resort to vulgar dialect or 
clownish pronunciation. You must steer a middle course. You 
are tied down to a given and appropriate articulation, which is 25 
determined by the habitual associations between sense and sound, 
and which you can only hit by entering into the author's mean- 
ing, as you must find the proper words and style to express 

155 



156 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

yourself by fixing your thoughts on the subject you have to write 
about. Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical 
cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts : but to write or 
speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus 
5 it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big 
as the thing you want to express : it is not so easy to pitch upon 
the very word that exactly fits it. Out of eight or ten words 
equally common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal preten- 
sions, it is a matter of some nicety and discrimination to pick 

10 out the very one, the preferableness of which is scarcely percep- 
tible, but decisive. The reason why I object to Dr. Johnson's 
style is, that there is no discrimination, no selection, no variety 
in it. He uses none but " tall, opaque words," taken from the 
" first row of the rubric : " — words with the greatest number of 

1 5 syllables, or Latin phrases with merely English terminations. If 
a fine style depended on this sort of arbitrary pretension, it would 
be fair to judge of an author's elegance by the measurement of 
his words, and the substitution of foreign circumlocutions (with 
no precise associations) for the mother-tongue.^ How simple is 

20 it to be dignified without ease, to be pompous without meaning ! 
Surely, it is but a mechanical rule for avoiding what is low to be 
always pedantic and affected. It is clear you cannot use a vulgar 
English word, if you never use a common English word at all. 
A fine tact is shewn in adhering to those which are perfectly 

25 common, and yet never falling into any expressions which are 
debased by disgusting circumstances, or which owe their sig- 
nification and point to technical or professional allusions. A 
truly natural or familiar style can never be quaint or vulgar, for 
this reason, that it is of universal force and applicability, and that 

30 quaintness and vulgarity arise out of the immediate connection 
of certain words with coarse and disagreeable, or with confined 

1 I have heard of such a thing as an author, who makes it a rule never to admit 
a monosyllable into his vapid verse. Vet the charm and sweetness of Marlow's 
lines depended often on their being made up almost entirely of monosyllables. 



ON FAMILIAR STYLE I 5/ 

ideas. The last form what we understand by cant or slatig 
phrases. — To give an example of what is not very clear in the 
general statement. I should say that the phrase To cut with a 
knife, or To cut a piece of wood, is perfectly free from vulgarity, 
because it is perfectly common : but to cut an acquaintance is 5 
not quite unexceptionable, because it is not perfectly common 
or intelligible, and has hardly yet escaped out of the limits of 
slang phraseology. I should hardly therefore use the word in 
this sense without putting it in italics as a license of expression, 
to be received cum grano satis. All provincial or bye-phrases 10 
come under the same mark of reprobation — all such as the 
writer transfers to the page from his fire-side or a particular 
coterie, or that he invents for his own sole use and convenience. 
I conceive that words are like money, not the worse for being 
common, but that it is the stamp of custom alone that gives them 1 5 
circulation or value. I am fastidious in this respect, and would 
almost as soon coin the currency of the realm as counterfeit the 
King's English. I never invented or gave a new and unauthorised 
meaning to any word but one single one (the term itnpersonal 
applied to feelings) and that was in an abstruse metaphysical 20 
discussion to express a very difficult distinction. I have been 
(I know) loudly accused of revelling in vulgarisms and broken 
English. I cannot speak to that point : but so far I plead guilty 
to the determined use of acknowledged idioms and common 
elliptical expressions. I am not sure that the critics in question 25 
know the one from the other, that is, can distinguish any medium 
between formal pedantry and the most barbarous solecism. As 
an author, I endeavour to employ plain words and popular modes 
of construction, as were I a chapman and dealer, I should com- 
mon weights and measures. 30 

The proper force of words lies not in the words themselves, 
but in their application. A word may be a fine-sounding word, 
of an unusual length, and very imposing from its learning and 
novelty, and yet in the connection in which it is introduced, 



158 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

may be quite pointless and irrelevant. It is not pomp or pre- 
tension, but the adaptation of the expression to the idea that 
clenches a writer's meaning : — as it is not the size or glossiness 
of the materials, but their being fitted each to its place, that gives 
5 strength to the arch ; or as the pegs and nails are as necessary 
to the support of the building as the larger timbers, and more 
so than the mere shewy, unsubstantial ornaments. I hate any 
thing that occupies more space than it is worth. I hate to see 
a load of band-boxes go along the street, and I hate to see a 

10 parcel of big words without any thing in them. A person who 
does not deliberately dispose of all his thoughts alike in cum- 
brous draperies and flimsy disguises, may strike out twenty 
varieties of familiar every-day language, each coming some- 
what nearer to the feeling he wants to convey, and at last not 

15 hit upon that particular and only one, which may be said to 
be identical with the exact impression in his mind. This would 
seem to shew that Mr. Cobbett is hardly right in saying that 
the first word that occurs is always the best. It may be a very 
good one ; and yet a better may present itself on reflection or 

20 from time to time. It should be suggested naturally, however, 
and spontaneously, from a fresh and lively conception of the 
subject. We seldom succeed by trying at improvement, or by 
merely substituting one word for another that we are not satis- 
fied with, as we cannot recollect the name of a place or person 

25 by merely plaguing ourselves about it. We wander farther from 
the point by persisting in a wrong scent ; but it starts up acci- 
dentally in the memory when we least expected it, by touching 
some link in the chain of previous association. 

There are those who hoard up and make a cautious display 

30 of nothing but rich and rare phraseology ; — ancient medals, 
obscure coins, and Spanish pieces of eight. They are very 
curious to inspect ; but I myself would neither offer nor take 
them in the course of exchange. A sprinkling of archaisms is 
not amiss; but a tissue of obsolete expressions is more ht/or 



ON FAMILIAR STYLE 1 59 

keep than wear. I do not say I would not use any phrase that 
had been brought into fashion before the middle or the end of 
the last century ; but I should be shy of using any that had not 
been employed by any approved author during the whole of 
that time. Words, like clothes, get old-fashioned, or mean and 5 
ridiculous, when they have been for some time laid aside. Mr. 
Lamb is the only imitator of old English style I can read with 
pleasure ; and he is so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his 
authors, that the idea of imitation is almost done away. There 
is an inward unction, a marrowy vein both in the thought and 10 
feeling, an intuition, deep and lively, of his subject, that carries 
off any quaintness or awkwardness arising from an antiquated 
style and dress. The matter is completely his own, though 
the manner is assumed. Perhaps his ideas are altogether so 
marked and individual, as Jo require their point and pungency 15 
to be neutralised by the affectation of a singular but traditional 
form of conveyance. Tricked out in the prevailing costume, 
they would probably seem more startling and out of the way. 
The old English authors. Burton, Fuller, Coryate, Sir Thomas 
Brown, are a kind of mediators between us and the more 20 
eccentric and whimsical modem, reconciling us to his peculiari- 
ties. I do not however know how far this is the case or not, 
till he condescends to write like one of us. I must confess that 
what I like best of his papers under the signature of Elia (still 
I do not presume, amidst such excellence, to decide what is 25 
most excellent) is the account of Mrs. Battlers Opinio7is on 
Whist, which is also the most free from obsolete allusions and 
turns of expression — 

"A well of native English undefiled." 

To those acquainted with his admired prototypes, these Essays 30 
of the ingenious and highly gifted author have the same sort of 
charm and relish, that Erasmus's Colloquies or a fine piece of 
modern Latin have to the classical scholar. Certainly, I do not 



l6o SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

know any borrowed pencil that has more power or felicity of 
execution than the one of which I have here been speaking. 

It is as easy to write a gaudy style without ideas, as it is to 
spread a pallet of shewy colours, or to smear in a flaunting 
5 transparency. "What do you read?" — ^" Words, words, words." 
— " What is the matter ? " — '^Nothing," it might be answered. 
The florid style is the reverse of the familiar. The last is em- 
ployed as an unvarnished medium to convey ideas ; the first is 
resorted to as a spangled veil to conceal the want of them. 

lo When there is nothing to be set down but words, it costs little 
to have them fine. Look through the dictionary, and cull out 
2i Jlorilegiiitn, rival the tidippomania. Rouge high enough, and 
never mind the natural complexion. The vulgar, who are not 
in the secret, will admire the look of preternatural health and 

15 vigour; and the fashionable, who regard only appearances, will 
be delighted with the imposition. Keep to your sounding gen- 
eralities, your tinkling phrases, and all will be well. Swell out 
an unmeaning truism to a perfect tympany of style. A thought, 
a distinction is the rock on which all this brittle cargo of verbi- 

20 age splits at once. Such writers have merely verbal imaginations, 
that retain nothing but words. Or their puny thoughts have 
dragon-wings, all green and gold. They soar far above the 
vulgar failing of the Sermo hiinii obrepens — their most ordinary 
speech is never short of an hyperbole, splendid, imposing, vague, 

25 incomprehensible, magniloquent, a cento of sounding common- 
places. If some of us, whose " ambition is more lowly," pry a 
little too narrowly into nooks and corners to pick up a number 
of " unconsidered trifles," they never once direct their eyes or 
lift their hands to seize on any but the most gorgeous, tarnished, 

30 thread-bare patch-work set of phrases, the left-off finery of poetic 
extravagance, transmitted down through successive generations 
of barren pretenders. If they criticise actors and actresses, a 
huddled phantasmagoria of feathers, spangles, floods of light, 
and oceans of sound float before their morbid sense, which they 



ON FAMILIAR STYLE l6l 

paint in the style of Ancient Pistol. Not a glimpse can you get 
of the merits or defects of the performers : they are hidden in a 
profusion of barbarous epithets and wilful rhodomontade. Our 
hypercritics are not thinking of these little fantoccini beings — 

" That strut and fret their hour upon the stage " — 5 

but of tall phantoms of words, abstractions, genera and species, 
sweeping clauses, periods that unite the Poles, forced alliter- 
ations, astounding antitheses — 

"And on their pens Fitstian sits plumed." 

If they describe kings and queens, it is an Eastern pageant. lo 
The Coronation at either House is nothing to it. We get at 
four repeated images — a curtain, a throne, a sceptre, and a 
foot-stool. These are with them the wardrobe of a lofty imagi- 
nation ; and they turn their servile strains to servile uses. Do 
we read a description of pictures 'i It is not a reflection of 1 5 
tones and hues which " nature's own sweet and cunning hand 
laid on," but piles of precious stones, rubies, pearls, emeralds, 
Golconda's mines, and all the blazonry of art. Such persons 
are in fact besotted with words, and their brains are turned 
with the glittering, but empty and sterile phantoms of things. 20 
Personifications, capital letters, seas of sunbeams, visions of 
glory, shining inscriptions, the figures of a transparency, Bri- 
tannia with her shield, or Hope leaning on an anchor, make up 
their stock in trade. They may be considered as hiei-oglyphical 
writers. Images stand out in their minds isolated and important 25 
merely in themselves, without any ground-work of feeling — 
there is no context in their imaginations. Words affect them 
in the same way, by the mere sound, that is, by their possible, 
not by their actual application to the subject in hand. They are 
fascinated by first appearances, and have no sense of conse- 30 
quences. Nothing more is meant by them than meets the ear : 
they understand or feel nothing more than meets their eye. The 
web and texture of the universe, and of the heart of man, is a 



l62 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

mystery to them : they have no faculty that strikes a chord in 
unison with it. They cannot get beyond the daubings of fancy, 
the varnish of sentiment. Objects are not linked to feelings, 
words to things, but images revolve in splendid mockery, words 
5 represent themselves in their strange rhapsodies. The cate- 
gories of such a mind are pride and ignorance — pride in out- 
side show, to which they sacrifice every thing, and ignorance of 
the true worth and hidden structure both of words and things. 
With a sovereign contempt for what is familiar and natural, 

lo they are the slaves of vulgar affectation — of a routine of high- 
flown phrases. Scorning to imitate realities, they are unable to 
invent any thing, to strike out one original idea. They are 
not copyists of nature, it is true : but they are the poorest 
of all plagiarists, the plagiarists of words. All is far-fetched, 

15 dear-bought, artificial, oriental in subject and allusion: all is 
mechanical, conventional, vapid, formal, pedantic in style and 
execution. They startle and confound the understanding of the 
reader, by the remoteness and obscurity of their illustrations : 
they soothe the ear by the monotony of the same everlasting 

20 round of circuitous metaphors. They are the mock-school in 
poetry and prose. They flounder about between fustian in ex- 
pression, and bathos in sentiment. They tantalise the fancy, 
but never reach the head nor touch the heart. Their Temple 
of Fame is like a shadowy structure raised by Dulness to Van- 

25 ity, or like Cowper's description of the Empress of Russia's 
palace of ice, as " worthless as in shew 'twas glittering " — 

" It smiled, and it was cold ! " 



ON GOING A JOURNEY 

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a jour- 
ney ; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room ; 
but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am 
then never less alone than when alone. 

" The fields his study, nature was his book." 5 

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. 
When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country. 
I am not for criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out 
of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There 
are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry 10 
the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room, and fewer 
incumbrances. I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for 
the sake of solitude ; nor do I ask for 

" • a friend in my retreat, 

Whom I may whisper, soHtude is sweet." 15 

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, 
just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all im- 
pediments and of all inconveniences ; to leave ourselves behind, 
much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little 
breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contem- 20 

plation 

" May plume her feathers and let grow her wings, 

That in the various bustle of resort 

Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd," 

that I absent myself from the town for awhile, without feeling 25 
at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend 
in a post-chaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, 
and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have 
a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over 

163 



l64 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road 
before me, and a three hours' march to dinner — and then to 
thinking ! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone 
heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the point 
5 of yonder rolling cloud, I plunge into my past being, and revel 
there, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave 
that wafts him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten things, 
like "sunken wrack and sumless treasuries," burst upon* my 
eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. 

lo Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or 
dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the 
heart which alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, 
alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I 
do ; but I sometimes had rather be without them. " Leave, 

1 5 oh, leave me to my repose ! " I have just now other business 
in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me " very 
stuff of the conscience." Is not this wild rose sweet without a 
comment ? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat 
of emerald .-' Yet if I were to explain to you the circumstance 

20 that has so endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I 
not better then keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood 
over, from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence 
onward to the far-distant horizon } I should be but bad com- 
pany all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have 

25 heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk 
or ride on by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this 
looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you 
are thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your party. 
" Out upon such half-faced fellowship," say I. I like to be 

30 either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal of others ; 
to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. 
I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbett's, that " he 
thought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our 
meals, and that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a 



ON GOING A JOURNEY 165 

time." So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in melancholy 
musing and lively conversation by fits and starts. " Let me 
have a companion of my way," says Sterne, " w^ere it but to 
remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines." It is 
beautifully said : but in my opinion, this continual comparing of 5 
notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon 
the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you 
feel in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid : if you have to explain 
it, it is making a toil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book 
of nature, without being perpetually put to the trouble of trans- 10 
lating it for the benefit of others. I am for the synthetical 
method on a journey, in preference to the analytical. I am 
content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to examine and 
anatomise them afterwards. I want to see my vague notions 
float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to 15 
have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. 
For once, I like to have it all my own way ; and this is im- 
possible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not 
covet. I have no objection to argue a point with any one for 
twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you 20 
remark the scent of a bean-field crossing the road, perhaps 
your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant 
object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his 
glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the 
colour of a cloud which hits your fancy, but the effect of which 3,5 
you are unable to account for. There is then no sympathy, but 
an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues 
you on the way, and in the end probably produces ill humour. 
Now I never quarrel with myself, and take all my own con- 
clusions for granted till I find it necessary to defend them 30 
against objections. It is not merely that you may not be of 
accord on the objects and circumstances that present them- 
selves before you — these may recal a number of objects, and 
lead to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly 



l66 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

communicated to others. ,Yet these I love to cherish, and 
sometimes still .fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the 
throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company, 
seems extravagance or affectation ; and, on the other hand, to 
5 have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to 
make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is 
not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must 
"give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend 
C , however, could do both. He could go on in the most 

10 delightful explanatory way over hill and dale, a summer's day, 
and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. 
" He talked far above singing." If I could so clothe my ideas 
in sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have 
some one with me to admire the swelling theme ; or I could be 

15 more content, were it possible for me still to hear his echoing 
voice in the woods of All-Foxden. They had " that fine mad- 
ness in them which our first poets had ; " and if they could have 
been caught by some rare instrument, would have breathed 
such strains as the following. 

20 " Here be woods as green 

As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet 
As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet 
Face of the curled streams, with flow'rs as many 
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any; 

25 Here be all new dehghts, cool streams and wells, 

Arbours o'ergrown with woodbines, caves and dells ; 
Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing. 
Or gather rushes, to make many a ring 
For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love ; 

30 How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove. 

First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes 
She took eternal fire that never dies ; 
How she convey'd him softly in a sleep, 
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep 

3^ Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, 

Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, 
To kiss her sweetest." — "Faithful Shepherdess." 



ON GOING A JOURNEY 167 

Had I words and images at command like these, I would at- , 
tempt- to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden 
ridges in the evening clouds : but at the sight of nature my 
fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up its leaves, like flowers 
at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot : — I must have 5 
time to collect myself. — 

In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects : it 

should be reserved for Table-talk. L is for this reason, 

I take it, the worst company in the world out of doors ; because 
he is the best within. I grant, there is one subject on which it 10 
is pleasant to talk on a journey ; and that is, what one shall 
have for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open 
air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, 
by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road 
heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it. 15 
How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted just 
at approach of night-fall, or to come to some straggling village, 
with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom ; and 
then after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place 
affords, to " take one's ease at one's inn ! " These eventful 20 
mioments in our lives' history are too precious, too full of solid, 
heart-felt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in im- 
perfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain 
them to the last drop : they will do to talk of or to write about 
afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after drinking 25 
whole goblets of tea, 

" The cups that cheer, but not inebriate," 

and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering 
what we shall have for supper — eggs and a rasher, a rab- 
bit smothered in onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet ! Sancho 30 
in such a situation once fixed on cow-heel ; and his choice, 
though he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then, in 
the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, 



l68 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen — Proctil^ 
O procul este profani ! lliese hours are sacred to silence and to 
musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed the 
source of smiling thoughts hereafter. I would not waste them 
5 in idle talk ; or if I must have the integrity of fancy broken 
in upon, I would rather it were by a stranger than a friend. 
A stranger takes his hue and character from the time and 
place ; he is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If 
he is a Quaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much 

lo the better. I do not even try to sympathise with him, and 
he breaks no squares. I associate nothing with my travelling 
companion but present objects and passing events. In his igno- 
rance of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. But 
a friend reminds one of other things, rips up old grievances, 

15 and destroys the abstraction of the scene. He comes in un- 
graciously between us and our imaginary character. Something 
is dropped in the course of conversation that gives a hint of 
your profession and pursuits ; or from having some one with you 
that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it seems 

20 that other people do. You are no longer a citizen of the world : 
but your " unhoused free condition is put into circumspection 
and confine." The incognita of an inn is one of its striking 
privileges — " lord of one's self, uncumber'd with a name." Oh ! 
it is great to shake off the trammels of the world and of 

25 public opinion — to lose our importunate, tormenting, everlast- 
ing personal identity in the elements of nature, and become 
the creature of the moment, clear of all ties — to hold to the 
universe only by a dish of sweet-breads, and to owe nothing 
but the score of the evening — and no longer seeking for 

30 applause and meeting with contempt, to be known by no other 
title than the Gentleman in the parlour ! One may take one's 
choice of all characters in this romantic state of uncertainty as 
to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely respectable and 
negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice and disappoint 



ON GOING A JOURNEY 169 

conjecture ; and from being so to others, begin to be objects 
of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more 
those hackneyed common-places that we appear in the world : 
an inn restores us to the level of nature, and quits scores with 
society ! I have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns — 5 
sometimes when I have been left entirely to myself, and have 
tried to solve some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham- 
common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not a case 
of the association of ideas — at other times, when there have 
been pictures in the room, as at St. Neot's, (I think it was), 10 
where I first met with Gribelin's engravings of the Cartoons, 
into which I entered at once, and at a little inn on the borders 
of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of Westall's 
drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that 
I had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who 15 
had ferried me over the Severn, standing up in a boat between 
me and the twilight — at other times I might mention luxuriating 
in books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remember 
sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia, which 
I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after being drenched 20 
in the rain all day ; and at the same place I got through two 
volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It was on the loth 
of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, 
at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold 
chicken. The letter I chose was that in which St. Preux 25 
describes his feelings as he first caught a glimpse from the 
heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which I had brought 
with me as a bon bouche to crown the evening with. It was my 
birth-day, and I had for the first time come from a place in the 
neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llan- 30 
goUen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham ; and on passing 
a certain point, you come all at once upon the valley, which 
opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic 
state on either side, with " green upland swells that echo to the 



I70 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

bleat of flocks " below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony 
bed in the midst of them. The valley at this time " glittered 
green with sunny showers," and a budding ash-tree dipped its 
tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad 
5 I was to walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious 
prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted from 
Mr. Coleridge's poems ! But besides the prospect which opened 
beneath my feet, another also opened to my inward sight, 
a heavenly vision, on which were written, in letters large as 
lo Hope could make them, these four words. Liberty, Genius, 
Love, Virtue ; which have since faded into the light of common 
day, or mock my idle gaze. 

" The beautiful is vanished, and returns not." 

Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot ; 

15 but I would return to it alone. What other self could I find to 
.share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the frag- 
ments of which I could hardly conjure up to myself, so much 
have they been broken and defaced ! I could stand on some 
tall rock, and overlook the precipice of years that separates me 

20 from what I then was. I was at that time going shortly to visit 
the poet whom I have above named. Where is he now .? Not 
only I myself have changed ; the world, which was then new 
to me, has become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee 
in thought, O sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as thou 

25 then wert ; and thou shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, 
where I will drink of the waters of life freely ! 

There is hardly anything that shows the short-sightedness or 
capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. 
With change of place we change our ideas ; nay, our opinions 

30 and feelings. We can by an effort indeed transport ourselves 
to old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the 
mind revives again ; but we forget those that we have just left. 
It seems that we can think but of one place at a time. The 



ON GOING A JOURNEY 171 

canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, and if we paint 
one set of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other. 
We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point of 
view. The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we 
take our fill of it, and seem as if we could form no other image 5 
of beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and think no more of it : 
the horizon that shuts it from our sight, also blots it from our 
memory like a dream. In travelling through a wild barren 
country, I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one. It 
appears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I 10 
see of it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we 
despise the country. " Beyond Hyde Park," says Sir Topling 
Flutter, " all is a desert." All that part of the map that we do 
not see before us is a blank. The world in our conceit of it is not 
much bigger than a nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded 15 
into another, county joined to county, kingdom to kingdom, land 
to seas, making an image voluminous and vast ; — the mind can 
form no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a 
single glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calcula- 
tion of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification 20 
of that immense mass of territory and population, known by 
the name of China to us ? An inch of paste-board on a wooden 
globe, of no more account than a China orange 1 Things near 
us are seen of the size of life : things at a distance are dimin- 
ished to the size of the understanding. We measure the universe 25 
by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture of our own 
being only piece-meal. In this way, however, we remember an 
infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical 
instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play 
them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same 30 
time excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, 
we cannot as it were unfold the whole web of our existence ; 
we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to a place 
where we have formerly lived and with which we have intimate 



1/2 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

associations, every one must have found that the feeling grows 
more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere 
anticipation of the actual impression : we remember circum- 
stances, feelings, persons, faces, names that we had not thought 
5 of for years ; but for the time all the rest of the world is forgotten ! 
— To return to the question I have quitted above. 

I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in 
company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for 
the former reason reversed. They are intelligible matters, and 

lo will bear talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but 
communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, 
but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, 
and philosophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure, the 
first consideration always is where we shall go to : in taking 

IS a solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by 
the way. " The mind is its own place ; " nor are we anxious to 
arrive at the end of our journey. I can myself do the honours 
indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once took a 
party to Oxford with no mean eclat — shewed them that seat 

20 of the Muses at a distance, 

" With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd " — 

descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy 
quadrangles and stone walls of halls and colleges — ■ was at 
home in the Bodleian ; and at Blenheim quite superseded the 

25 powdered Ciceroni that attended us, and that pointed in vain 
with his wand to common-place beauties in matchless pictures. — 
As another exception to the above reasoning, I should not feel 
confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign country without 
a companion. I should want at intervals to hear the sound of 

30 my own language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the 
mind of an Englishman to foreign manners and notions that 
requires the assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As 
the distance from home increases, this relief, which was at first 



ON GOING A JOURNEY 173 

a luxury, becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would 
almost feel stifled to find himself in the deserts of Arabia with- 
out friends and countrymen : there must be allowed to be 
something in the view of Athens or old Rome that claims the 
utterance of speech ; and I own that 'the Pyramids are too 5 
mighty for any single contemplation. In such situations, so 
opposite to all one's ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species 
by one's-self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can meet 
with instant fellowship and support. — Yet I did not feel this 
want or craving very pressing once, when I first set my foot on 10 
the laughing shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty 
and delight. The confused, busy murmur of the place was like 
oil and wine poured into my ears ; nor did the mariners' hymn, 
which was sung from the top of an old crazy vessel in the 
harbour, as the sun went down, send an alien sound into my 15 
soul. I only breathed the air of general humanity. I walked 
over " the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France," erect 
and satisfied ; for the image of man was not cast down and 
chained to the foot of arbitrary thrones : I was at no loss for 
language, for that of all the great schools of painting was open 20 
to me. The whole is vanished like a shade. Pictures, heroes, 
glory, freedom, all are fled : nothing remains but the Bourbons 
and the French people ! — There is undoubtedly a sensation in 
travelling into foreign parts that is to be had nowhere else : but 
it is more pleasing at the time than lasting. It is too remote -S 
from our habitual associations to be a common topic of discourse 
or reference, and, like a dream or another state of existence, 
does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an animated 
but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effort to exchange 
our actual for our ideal identity ; and to feel the pulse of our 30 
old transports revive very keenly, we must " jump " all our 
present comforts and connexions. Our romantic and itinerant 
character is not to be domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how 
little foreign travel added to the facilities of conversation in 



1/4 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

those who had been abroad. In fact, the time we have spent 
there is both delightful and in one sense instructive ; but it 
appears to be cut out of our substantial, downright existence, 
and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the same, but 
5 another, and perhaps more enviable individual, all the time we 
are out of our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well 
as our friends. So the poet somewhat quaintly sings, 

" Out of my country and myself I go." 

Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent 
ID themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recal 
them : but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place 
that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough 
to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could 
any where borrow another life to spend afterwards at home ! — 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 

My father was a Dissenting Minister at W m in Shrop- 
shire ; and in the year 1798 (the figures that compose that 
date are to me like the " dreaded name of Demogorgon ") 
Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to succeed Mr. Rowe in 
the spiritual charge of a Unitarian congregation there. He did 5 
not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he was to 
preach ; and Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach 
in a state of anxiety and expectation, to look for the arrival of 
his successor, could find no one at all answering the description 
but a round-faced man in a short black coat (like a shooting- 10 
jacket) which hardly seemed to have been made for him, but 
who seemed to be talking at a great rate to his fellow-passen- 
gers. Mr. Rowe had scarce returned to give an account of his 
disappointment, when the round-faced man in black entered, 
and dissipated all doubts on the subject, by beginning to talk. 15 
He did not cease while he staid ; nor has he since, that I know 
of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful sus- 
pense for three weeks that he remained there, " fluttering the 
proud Salopians like an eagle in a dove-cote ; " and the Welch 
mountains that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous con- 20 
fusion, agree to have heard no such mystic sounds since the 

days of 

" High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay ! " 

As we passed along between W m and Shrewsbury, and 

I eyed their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, or 25 
the red rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the roadside, 
a sound was in my ears as of a Siren's song ; I was stunned, 
startled with it, as from deep sleep ; but I had no notion then 
that I should ever be able to express my admiration to others 

175 



176 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius 
shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering in the puddles 
of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, 
like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless ; but 
5 now, bursting from the deadly bands that " bound them, 

" With Styx nine times round them," 

my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, 
catch the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed re- 
mained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings 

10 infinite and unsatisfied ; my heart, shut up in the prison-house 
of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to 
speak to ; but that my understanding also did not remain dumb 
and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself, I 
owe to Coleridge. But this is not to my purpose. 

15 My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the 
habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr. Jenkins 
of Whitchurch (nine miles farther on) according to the custom of 
Dissenting Ministers in each other's neighbourhood. A line 
of communication is thus established, by which the flame of civil 

20 and religious liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering 
fire unquenchable, like the fires in the Agamemnon of ^'Eschylus, 
placed at different stations, that waited for ten long years to 
announce with their blazing pyramids the destruction of Troy. 
Coleridge had agreed to come over and see my father, according 

25 to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's probable suc- 
cessor ; but in the mean time I had gone to hear him preach 
the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting 
up into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the Gospel, was a romance 
in these degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit 

30 of Christianity, which was not to be resisted. 

It was in January, 1798, that I rose one morning before day- 
light, to walk ten miles in the mud, and went to hear this cele- 
brated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 1 77 

I have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in 
the winter of the year 1798. H y a des. impressions que ni Ic ferns 
ni les circonstances peuvent effacer. JDiisse-je vivre des siedes entiers, 
le doux tems de ma jetmesse ne pent renattre pour moi, ni s' effacer 
ja7?iais dans ma mhfioire. When I got there, the organ was 5 
playing the looth psalm, and, when it was done, Mr. Coleridge 
rose and gave out his text, " And he went up into the moun- 
tain to pray, himself, alone." As he gave out this text, his 
voice " rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes," and when 
he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep, 10 
and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the 
sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as 
if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the 
universe. The idea of St. John came into mind, " of one crying 
in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food 15 
was locusts and wild honey." The preacher then launched into 
his subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon 
was upon peace and war ; upon church and state — not their 
alliance, but their separation — on the spirit of the world and 
the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to 20 
one another. He talked of those who had " inscribed the cross 
of Christ on banners dripping with human gore." He made a 
poetical and pastoral excursion, — • and to shew the fatal effects 
of war, drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd 
boy, driving his team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, pip- 25 
ing to hiS flock, " as though he should never be old," and the 
same poor country-lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, 
made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer- 
boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, 
a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the loathsome finery 30 
of the profession of blood. 

" Such were the notes our once-lov'd poet sung." 

And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had 



178 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had 
met together, Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye 
and with the sanction of Religion. This was even beyond my 
hopes. I returned home well satisfied. The sun that was still 
5 labouring pale and wan through the sky, obscured by thick 
mists, seemed an emblem of the good cause ; and the cold dank 
drops of dew that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, 
had something genial and refreshing in them ; for there was a 
spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned everything 
10 into good. The face of nature had not then the brand of Jus 
DiviNUM on it : 

" Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe." 

On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. 
I was called down into the room where he was, and went half- 

15 hoping, half-afraid. He received me very graciously, and I 
listened for a long time without uttering a word. I did not 
suffer in his opinion by my silence. " For those two hours," he 
afterwards was pleased to say, " he was conversing with W. H.'s 
forehead ! " His appearance was different from what I had 

20 anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the 

dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness 

in his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with 

the small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even 

bright — 
25 "As are the children of yon azure sheen." 

His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, 
with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath 
them like a sea with darkened lustre. " A certain tender bloom 
his face o'erspread," a purple tinge as we see it in the pale 
30 thoughtful complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo 
and Velasquez. His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, elo- 
quent ; his chin good-humoured and round ; but his nose, the 
rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 179 

nothing — like what he has done. It might seem that the 
genius of his face as from a height surveyed and projected 
him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into the world 
unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support 
or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched 5 
his adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without 
oars or compass. So at least I comment on it after the event. 
Coleridge in his person was rather above the common size, in- 
clining to the corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, " somewhat fat 
and pursy." His hair (now, alas ! grey) was then black and 10 
glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth masses over his fore- 
head. This long pendulous hair is peculiar to enthusiasts, to 
those whose minds tend heavenward ; and is traditionally insep- 
arable (though of a different colour) from the pictures of Christ. 
It ought to belong, as a character, to all who preach Christ 15 
crucified, and Coleridge was at that time one of those ! 

It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my 
father, who was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into 
the vale of years. He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully 
brought up by his parents, and sent to the University of Glas- 20 
gow (where he studied under Adam Smith) to prepare him for 
his future destination. It was his mother's proudest wish to see 
her son a Dissenting Minister. So if we look back to past gen- 
erations (as far as eye can reach) we see the same hopes, fears, 
wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing in the 25 
human heart ; and so we may see them (if we look forward) 
rising up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in 
the human breast ! After being tossed about from congregation 
to congregation in the heats of the Unitarian controversy, and 
squabbles about the American war, he had been relegated to an 30 
obscure village, where he was to spend the last thirty years of 
his life, far from the only converse that he loved, the talk about 
disputed texts of Scripture and the cause of civil and religious 
liberty. Here he passed his days, repining but resigned, in the 



l8o SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

study of the Bible, and the perusal of the Commentators, — huge 
folios, not easily got through, one of which would outlast a 
winter! Why did he pore on these from morn to night (with 
the exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to 
5 gather brocoli-plants or kidney-beans of his own rearing, with 
no small degree of pride and pleasure) ? Here were " no figures 
nor no fantasies," — neither poetry nor philosophy — nothing 
to dazzle, nothing to excite modern curiosity ; but to his lack- 
lustre eyes there appeared, within the pages of the ponderous, 

lo unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH in 
Hebrew capitals : pressed down by the weight of the style, worn 
to the last fading thinness of the understanding, there were 
glimpses, glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings, 
with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and processions of 

15 camels at the distance of three thousand years; there was Moses 
with the Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes, types, 
shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets ; there were dis- 
cussions (dull enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty 
speculation ! there were oudines, rude guesses at the shape of 

20 Noah's Ark and of the riches of Solomon's Temple ; questions 
as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of all 
things ; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the 
globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned 
over ; and though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic 

25 veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a slumber 
ill-exchanged for all the sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, 
or reason. My father's life was comparatively a dream ; but it 
was a dream of infinity and eternity, of death, the resurrection, 
and a judgment to come ! 

30 No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host 
and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript : 
yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him 
welcome. He could hardly have been more surprised or pleased, 
if our visitor had vvorn wings. Indeed, his thoughts had wings ; 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS l8l 

and as the silken sounds rustled round our little wainscoted 
parlour, my father threw back his spectacles over his forehead, 
his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue ; and a smile of 
delight beamed across his rugged cordial face, to think that 
Truth had found a new ally in Fancy ! ^ Besides, Coleridge 5 
seemed to take considerable notice of me, and that of itself was 
enough. He talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced 
over a variety of subjects. At dinner-time he grew more ani- 
mated, and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary Wolstone- 
craft and Mackintosh. The last, he said, he considered (on my 10 
father's speaking of his Vindicice Galliccz as a capital perform- 
ance) as a clever scholastic man — a master of the topics, — or 
as the ready warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly where 
to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were not 
his own. He thought hirn no match for Burke, either in style 15 
or matter. Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere 
logician. Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in 
figures, because he had an eye for nature : Mackintosh, on the 
other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only an eye to common- 
places. On this I ventured to say that I had always entertained 20 
a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I could find) the 
speaking of him with contempt might be made the test of a 
vulgar democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever 
made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking 
one. I remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on 25 
the table that day had the finest flavour imaginable. Coleridge 
added that Mackintosh and Tom Wedgwood (of whom, how- 
ever, he spoke highly) had expressed a very indifferent opinion 
of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them 
— " He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the 30 
distance ! " Godwin had once boasted to him of having carried 

1 My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be 
very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were 
forced and dry ; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, 
and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, 1 have never seen them equalled. 



l82 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

on an argument with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious 
success ; Coleridge told him — "If there had been a man of 
genius in the room, he would have settled the question in five 
minutes." He asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, 
5 and I said, I had once for a few moments, and that she seemed 
to me to turn off Godwin's objections to something she advanced 
with quite a playful, easy air. He replied, that " this was only 
one instance of the ascendancy which people of imagination 
exercised over those of mere intellect." He did not rate Godwin 

lo very high ^ (this was caprice or prejudice, real or affected) but 
he had a great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft's powers of conversa- 
tion, none at all of her talent for book-making. We talked a 
little about Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much 
struck with him, and he said, he thought himself in more danger 

IS of being struck by him. I complained that he would not let me 
get on at all, for he required a definition of every the commonest 
word, exclaiming, " What do you mean by a sensation. Sir t What 
do you mean by an idea ? " This, Coleridge said, was barricado- 
ing the road to truth : — it was setting up a ' turnpike-gate at 

20 every step we took. I forget a great number of things, many 
more than I remember ; but the day passed off pleasantly, and 
the next morning Mr. Coleridge was to return to Shrewsbury. 
When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had just 
received a letter from his friend, T. Wedgwood, making him an 

25 offer of ^150 a-year if he chose to wave his present pursuit, 
and devote himself entirely to the study of poetry and philoso- 
phy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind to close with this 
proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an 
additional damp on his departure. It took the wayward enthu- 

30 siast quite from us to cast him into Deva's winding vales, or 
by the shores of old romance. Instead of living at ten miles 

1 He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempting to estab- 
lish the future immortality of man, " without" (as he said) " knowing what Death 
was or what Life was " — and the tone in which he pronounced these two words 
seemed to convey a complete image of both. 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 183 

distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting congregation at 
Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill of Parnassus, 
to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Alas ! I knew 
not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr. Wedg- 
wood's bounty. I was pleasantly relieved from this dilemma ; 5 
for Mr. Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going to a 
table to write something on a bit of card, advanced towards me 
with undulating step, and giving me the precious document, 
said that that was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether- Stowey, 
Somersetshire ; and that he should be glad to see me there in a 10 
few weeks' time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to meet 
me. I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile 
is to be found in Cassandra) when he sees a thunder-bolt fall 
close at his feet. I stammered out my acknowledgments and 
acceptance of this offer (I thought Mr. Wedgwood's annuity a 1 5 
trifle to it) as well as I could ; and this mighty business being 
settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I accompanied him six 
miles on the road. It was a fine morning in the middle of winter, 
and he talked the whole way. The scholar in Chaucer is de- 
scribed as going 20 
" Sounding on his way." 

So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing 
from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to 
slide on ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he 
should have preached two sermons before he accepted the situ- 25 
ation at Shrewsbury, one on Infant Baptism, the other on the 
Lord's Supper, shewing that he could not administer either, 
which would have effectually disqualified him for the object in 
view. I observed that he continually crossed me on the way by 
shifting from one side of the foot-path to the other. This struck 30 
me as an odd movement ; but I did not at that time connect it 
with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle, 
as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a strait 
line. He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles he 



l84 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

said was stolen from an objection started in one of South's Ser- 
mons — Credat Judasus Apella!) I was not very much pleased 
at this account of Hume, for I had just been reading, with 
infinite relish, that completest of all metaphysical choke-pears, 
5 his Treatise on Human Nature, to which the Essays, in point of 
scholastic subdety and close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, 
light summer-reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of 
Hume's general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste 
or candour. He however made me amends by the manner in 

lo which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his Essay 
on Vision as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it un- 
doubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for 
striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's Theory 
of Matter and Spirit, and saying, " Thus I confute him. Sir." 

1 5 Coleridge drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought about 
the connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He 
said the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute 
mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. The 
one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the characteristic of a 

20 philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a true philosopher, 
a profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of nature 
and his own mind. He did not speak of his Analogy, but of 
his Sermons at the Rolls' Chapel, of which I had never heard. 
Coleridge somehow always contrived to prefer the unknoiun to 

25 the known. In this instance he was right. The Analogy is a 
tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special-pleading ; 
the Sermons (with the Preface to them) are in a fine vein of 
deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our observation of 
human nature, without pedantry and without bias. I told 

30 Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was sometimes 
foolish enough to believe that I had made a discovery on the 
same subject (the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human 
Mind) — and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, who 
listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed in making 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 185 

myself understood. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards 
for the twentieth time, got new pens and paper, determined to 
make clear work of it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the 
skeleton-style of a mathematical demonstration, stopped half 
way down the second page ; and, after trying in vain to pump 5 
up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or observa- 
tions, from that gulph of abstraction in which I had plunged 
myself for four or five years preceding, gave up the attempt as 
labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency on the 
blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I 10 
better than I was then ? Oh no ! One truth discovered, one 
pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all 
the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go 
back to what I then was ! Why can we not revive past times 
as we can revisit old places ? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir 1 5 
Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road 

hetiveen W- m and Shrewsbury, and immortalise every step 

of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the 
very milestones had ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all 
its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed ! I remember but one 20 
other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, 
praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned 
his sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and 
said that "the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy 
being made a text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to 25 
the national character." We parted at the six-mile stone ; and I 
returned homeward, pensive but much pleased. I had met with 
unexpected notice from a person, whom I believed to have been 
prejudiced against me. " Kind and affable to me had been his 
condescension, and should be honoured ever with suitable re- 30 
gard." He was the first poet I had known, and he certainly 
answered to that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of 
his powers of conversation, and was not disappointed. In fact, 
T never met with any thing at all like them, either before or 



I86 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

since. I could easily credit the accounts which were circulated 
of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an 
evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made 
the whole material universe look like a transparency of fine 
5 words ; and another story (which I believe he has somewhere 
told himself) of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, of 
his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a sofa, 
where the company found him to their no small surprise, which 
was increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and 

lo rubbing his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three- 
hours' description of the third heaven, of which he had had a 
dream, very different from Mr. Southey's Vision of Judgment, 
and also from that other Vision of Judgment, which Mr. Murray, 
the Secretary of the Bridge-street Junto, has taken into his 

15 especial keeping! 

On my way back, I had a sound in my ears, it was the voice 
of Fancy : I had a light before me, it was the face of Poetry. 
The one still lingers there, the other has not quitted my side ! 
Coleridge in truth met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, 

20 or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed. 
I had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was 
to visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter 
gave me a welcoming ; the vernal air was balm and inspiration 
to me. The golden sun-sets, the silver star of evening, lighted 

25 me on my way to new hopes and prospects. / zvas to visit 
Coleridge in the Spring. This circumstance was never absent 
from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote 
to him at the time proposed, and received an answer postponing 
my intended visit for a week or two, but very cordially urging 

30 me to complete my promise then. This delay did not damp, 
but rather increased my ardour. In the mean time I went to 
Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the mysteries of 
natural scenery ; and I must say I was enchanted with it. I had 
been reading Coleridge's description of England, in his fine Ode 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 187 

on the Departing Year, and I applied it, avt amore, to the objects 
before me. Tliat valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of 
a new existence : in the river that winds through it, my spirit 
was baptised in the waters of Helicon ! 

I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with 5 
unworn heart and untried feet. My way lay through Worcester 
and Gloucester, and by Upton, where I thought of Tom Jones 
and the adventure of the muff. I remember getting completely 
wet through one day, and stopping at an inn (I think it was at 
Tewkesbury) where I sat up all night to read Paul and Virginia. 10 
Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched my body, 
and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books I read ! 
I recollect a remark of Coleridge's upon this very book, that 
nothing could shew the gross indelicacy of French manners and 
the entire corruption of their imagination more strongly than the 1 5 
behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away 
from a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save 
her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in 
swimming. Was this a time to think of such a circumstance ? 
I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on 20 
Grasmere lake, that I thought he had borrowed the idea of his 
Foe?fis on the Naming of Places from the local inscriptions of 
the same kind in Paul and Virginia. He did not own the obli- 
gation, and stated some distinction without a difference, in defence 
of his claim to originality. Any the slightest variation would be 25 
sufficient for this purpose in his mind ; for whatever he added 
or omitted would inevitably be worth all that any one else had 
done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment. I was still two 
days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken care 
to set out early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridge- 30 
water, and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its 
muddy river, returned to the inn, and read Camilla. So have 
I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going 
to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I 



I88 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

have wanted only one thing to make me happy ; but wanting 
that, have wanted everything ! 

I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether 
Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. 
5 I saw it but the other clay, after an interval of twenty years, 
from a hill near Taunton. How was the map of my life spread 
out before me, as the map of the country lay at my feet ! In 
the afternoon Coleridge took me over to AU-Foxden, a romantic 
old family-mansion of the St. Aubins, where Wordsworth lived. 

lo It was then in the possession of a friend of the poet's, who 
gave him the free use of it. Somehow that period (the time 
just after the French Revolution) was not a time when nothing 
7vas given for nothi?ig. The mind opened, and a softness might 
be perceived coming over the heart of individuals, beneath " the 

15 scales that fence" our self-interest. Wordsworth himself was 
from home, but his sister kept house, and set before us a frugal 
repast ; and we had free access to her brother's poems, the Lyri- 
cal Ballads, which were still in manuscript, or in the form of 
Syhilline Leaves. I dipped into a few of these with great satis- 

20 faction, and with the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an 
old room with blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced 
family-portraits of the age of George I. and II. and from the 
wooded declivity of the adjoining park that overlooked my 
window, at the dawn of day, could 

25 " hear the loud stag speak." 

In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) 
our imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between 
sleeping and waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses 
of strange shapes, and there is always something to come better 
30 than what we see. As in our dreams the fulness of the blood 
gives warmth and reality to the coinage of the brain, so in youth 
our ideas are clothed, and fed, and pampered with our good 
spirits ; we breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the weight 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 189 

of future years presses on the strong pulses of the heart, and 
we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As we 
advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of hope. We 
are no longer wrapped in lamb's-wool, lulled in Elysium. As 
we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the sense 5 
palls ; and nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless shadows 
of what has been ! 

That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out 
into the park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash- 
tree that stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud with 10 
a sonorous and musical voice the ballad of Betty Foy. I was 
not critically or sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth 
and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in the Thorn, 
the Mad Mother, and the Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman, 
I felt that deeper power and pathos which have been since 15 
acknowledged, 

" In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite," 

as the characteristics of this author ; and the sense of a new 
style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me 
something of the effect that arises from the turning up of the 20 
fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath of Spring : 

" While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed." 

Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and 
his voice sounded high 

"Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 25 

Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," 

as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or water- 
fall, gleaming in the summer moonlight ! He lamented that 
Wordsworth was not prone enough to believe in the traditional 
superstitions of the place, and that there was a something cor- 30 
poreal, a matter-of-fact-ncss, a clinging to the palpable, or often 
to the petty, in his poetry, in consequence. His genius was not 



I90 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

a spirit that descended to him through the air ; it sprung out 
of the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green 
spray, on which the gold-finch sang. He said, however (if I 
remember right) that this objection must be confined to his 
5 descriptive pieces, that his philosophic poetry had a grand and 
comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit 
the universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, 
rather than by deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived 
from Bristol at Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. 

lo He answered in some degree to his friend's description of him, 
but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was quaintly 
dressed (according to the costume of that unconstrained period) 
in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. There was 
something of a roll, a lounge, in his gait, not unlike his own 

15 Peter Bell. There was a severe, worn pressure of thought 
about his temples, a fire in his eye (as if he saw something 
in objects more than the outward appearance) an intense high 
narrow forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong 
purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to laughter 

20 about the mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, 
stately expression of the rest of his face. Chantry's bust wants 
the marking traits ; but he was teazed into making it regular 
and heavy : Haydon's head of him, introduced into the Entrance 
of Christ into Jerusalem^ is the most like his drooping weight 

25 of thought and expression. He sat down and talked very natu- 
rally and freely, with a mixture of clear, gushing accents in his 
voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the 
northern burr, like the crust on wine. He instantly began to 
make havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table, and 

30 said triumphantly that '' his marriage with experience had not 
been so productive as Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowl- 
edge of the good things of this life." He had been to see the 
Castle Spectre, by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described 
it very well. He said " it fitted the taste of the audience like a 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 191 

glove." This ad captandum merit was however by no means a 
recommendation of it, according to the severe principles of the 
new school, which reject rather than court popular effect. Words- 
worth, looking out of the low, latticed window, said, " How 
beautifully the sun sets on that yellow bank ! " I thought within 5 
myself, " With what eyes these poets see nature ! " and ever 
after, when I saw the sun-set stream upon the objects facing 
it, conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Words- 
worth for having made one for me ! We went over to All- 
Foxden again the day following, and Wordsworth read us the 10 
story of Peter Bell in the open air ; and the comment made 
upon it by his face and voice was very different from that of 
some later critics ! Whatever might be thought of the poem, 
" his face was as a book where men might read strange mat- 
ters," and he announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. 15 
There is a chaiint in the recitation both of Coleridge and Words- 
worth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the 
judgment. Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making 
habitual use of this ambiguous accompaniment. Coleridge's 
manner is more full, animated, and varied ; Wordsworth's more 20 
equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be termed 
more dramatic, the other more lyrical. Coleridge has told me 
that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, 
or breaking through the straggling branches of a copsewood ; 
whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) walking up and 2 5 
down a strait gravel-walk, or in some spot where the conti- 
nuity of his verse met with no collateral interruption. Returning 
that same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with 
Wordsworth, while Coleridge was explaining the different notes 
of the nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us sue- 30 
ceeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible. Thus 
I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in the neighbour- 
hood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful chat in 
an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting 



192 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

under two fine elm-trees, and listening to the bees humming 
round us, while we quaffed our flip. It was agreed, among 
other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol- 
Channel, as far as Linton. We set off together on foot, Cole- 
5 ridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a native of 
Nether Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Coleridge's 
discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time to the 
sound of a brass pan. He " followed in the chace like a dog 
who hunts, not like one that made up the cry." He had on 

lo a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in 
stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a drover, which 
he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the 
side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, that 
he might not lose a syllable or sound, that fell from Coleridge's 

IS lips. He told me his private opinion, that Coleridge was a 
wonderful man. He scarcely opened his lips, much less offered 
an opinion the whole way : yet of the three, had I to chuse 
during that journey, I would be John Chester. He afterwards 
followed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean philoso- 

20 phers were puzzled how to bring him under any of their cate- 
gories. When he sat down at table with his idol, John's felicity 
was complete ; Sir Walter Scott's or Mr. Blackwood's, when 
they sat down at the same table with the King, was not more 
so. We passed Dunster on our right, a small town between the 

25 brow of a hill and the sea. I remember eying it wistfully as it 
lay below us : contrasted with the woody scene around, it looked 
as clear, as pure, as anbrowned and ideal as any landscape I 
have seen since, of Gasper Poussin's or Domenichino's. We 
had a long day's march — (our feet kept time to the echoes 

30 of Coleridge's tongue) — through Minehead and by the Blue 
Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not reach till near 
midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a lodg- 
ment. We however knocked the people of the house up at last, 
and we were repaid for our apprehensions and fatigue by some 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 193 

excellent rashers of fried bacon and eggs. The view in coming 
along had been splendid. We walked for miles and miles on 
dark brown heaths overlooking the channel, with the Welsh 
hills beyond, and at times descended into little sheltered valleys 
close by the sea-side, with a smuggler's face scowling by us, and 5 
then had to ascend conical hills with a path winding up through 
a coppice to a barren top, like a monk's shaven crown, from 
one of which I pointed out to Coleridge's notice the bare masts 
of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon and within the red- 
orbed disk of the setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the 10 
Ancient Mariner. At Linton the character of the sea-coast be- 
comes more marked and rugged. There is a place called the 
Valley of Rocks (I suspect this was only the poetical name for 
it) bedded among precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky 
caverns beneath, into which the waves dash, and where the sea- 15 
gull for ever wheels its screaming flight. On the tops of these 
are huge stones thrown transverse, as if an earthquake had 
tossed them there, and behind these is a fretwork of perpen- 
dicular rocks, something like the Giant'' s Caiisezvay. A thunder- 
storm came on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge was 20 
running out bareheaded to enjoy the commotion of the elements 
in the Valley of Rocks, but as if in spite, the clouds only mut- 
tered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing drops. 
Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were to have made 
this place the scene of a prose-tale, which was to have been 25 
in the manner of, but far superior to, the Death of Abel, but 
they had relinquished the design. In the morning of the second 
day, we breakfasted luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlour, on 
tea, toast, eggs, and honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives 
from which it had been taken, and a garden full of thyme and 30 
wild flowers that had produced it. On this occasion Coleridge 
spoke of Virgil's Georgics, but not well. I do not think he had 
much feeling for the classical or elegant. It was in this room 
that we found a little worn-out copy of the Seasons, lying in 



194 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

a window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, " That is true 
fame ! " He said Thomson was a great poet, rather than a 
good one ; his style was as meretricious as his thoughts were 
natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best modern poet. He 
5 said the Lyrical Ballads were an experiment about to be tried 
by him and Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste would 
endure poetry written in a more natural and simple style than 
had hitherto been attempted ; totally discarding the artifices of 
poetical diction, and making use only of such words as had prob- 

lo ably been common in the most ordinary language since the 
days of Henry H. Some comparison was introduced between 
Shakespear and Milton. He said " he hardly knew which to 
prefer, Shakespear appeared to him a mere stripling in the art ; 
he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity than 

15 Milton, but he never appeared to have come to man's estate; 
or if he had, he would not have been a man, but a monster." 
He spoke with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. 
He did not like the versification of the latter. He observed that 
" the ears of these couplet-writers might be charged with having 

20 short memories, that could not retain the harmony of whole 
passages." He thought little of Junius as a writer; he had a 
dislike of Dr. Johnson ; and a much higher opinion of Burke 
as an orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He however 
thought him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to 

25 some of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. 
He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could I get him 
to enter into the merits of Caleb Williams} In short, he was 
profound and discriminating with respect to those authors whom 
he liked, and where he gave his judgment fair play ; capricious, 

i He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time I had as 
little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of the Cartoons at 
Pisa, by Buffamalco and others ; of one in particular where Death is seen in the 
air brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his 
approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He 
would of course understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time. 



MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 1 95 

perverse, and prejudiced in his antipathies and distastes. We 
loitered on the " ribbed sea-sands," in such talk as this, a whole 
morning, and I recollect met with a curious sea-weed, of which 
John Chester told us the country name ! A fisherman gave 
Coleridge an account of a boy that had been drowned the day 5 
before, and that they had tried to save him at the risk of their 
own lives. He said " he did not know how it was that they ven- 
tured, but. Sir, we have a nature towards one another." This 
expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of 
that theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) 10 
had adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove 
that likeness was not mere association of ideas. I said that the 
mark in the sand put one in mind of a man's foot, not because 
it was part of a former impression of a man's foot (for it was 
quite new) but because it was like the shape of a man's foot. 15 
He assented to the justness of this distinction (which I have 
explained at length elsewhere, for the benefit of the curious), 
and John Chester listened ; not from any interest in the subject, 
but because he was astonished that I should be able to suggest 
anything to Coleridge that he did not already know. We re- 20 
turned on the third morning, and Coleridge remarked the silent 
cottage-smoke curling up the valleys where, a few evenings 
before, we had seen the lights gleaming through the dark. 

In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on 
my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morn- 25 
ing, and he was to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. 
I asked him if he had prepared anything for the occasion ? He 
said he had not even thought of the text, but should as soon 
as we parted. I did not go to hear him, — this was a fault, — 
but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we 30 
had a long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by 
a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, 
when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines of his 
tragedy of Remorse, which I must say became his mouth and 



196 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

that occasion better than they, some years after, did Mr. Elliston's 
and the Drury-lane boards, — 

" Oh memory ! shield me from the world's poor strife, 
And give those scenes thine everlasting life." 

5 I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period 
he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany ; and 
his return was cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It 
was not till some time after that I knew his friends Lamb and 
Southey. The last always appears to me (as I first saw him) 

10 with a common-place-book under his arm, and the first with a 
bon-mot in his mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with 
Holcroft and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely which 
was the best — Mati as he was, or man as he is to he. " Give 
me," says Lamb, " man as he is not to be." This saying was 

15 the beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still 
continues. — Enough of this for the present. 

" But there is matter for another rhyme, 
And I to this may add a second tale." 



MERRY ENGLAND 

" St. George for merry England ! " 

This old-fashioned epithet might be supposed to have been 
bestowed ironically, or on the old principle — Ut Incus a noJi 
luceiido. Yet there is something in the sound that hits the 
fancy, and a sort of truth beyond appearances. To be sure, it 5 
is from a dull, homely ground that the gleams of mirth and 
jollity break out ; but the streaks of light that tinge the evening 
sky are not the less striking on that account. The beams of the 
morning-sun shining on the lonely glades, or through the idle 
branches of the tangled forest, the leisure, the freedom, " the 10 
pleasure of going and coming v/ithout knowing where," the 
troops of wild deer, the sports of the chase, and other rustic 
gambols, were sufficient to justify the well-known appellation 
of " Merry Sherwood," and in like manner, we may apply the 
phrase to Merry England. The smile is not the less sincere be- 1 5 
cause it does not always play upon the cheek ; and the jest is 
not the less welcome, nor the laugh less hearty, because they 
happen to be a relief from care or leaden-eyed melancholy. The 
instances are the more precious as they are rare ; and we look 
forward to them with the greater good will, or back upon them 20 
with the greater gratitude, as we drain the last drop in the cup 
with particular relish. If not always gay or in good spirits, we 
are glad when any occasion draws us out of our natural gloom, 
and disposed to make the most of it. We may say with Silence 
in the play, "I have been merry ere now," — and this once 25 
was to serve him all his life ; for he was a person of wonderful 
silence and gravity, though " he chirped over his cups," and 
announced with characteristic glee that " there were pippins 

197 



198 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and cheese to come." Silence was in this sense a merry man, 
that is, he would be merry if he could, and a very great econ- 
omy of wit, like a very slender fare, was a banquet to him, 
from the simplicity of his taste and habits. " Continents," says 
5 Hobbes, '' have most of what they contain " — and in this view 
it may be contended that the English are the merriest people in 
the world, since they only show it on high-days and holidays. 
They are then like a school-boy let loose from school, or like a 
dog that has slipped his collar. They are not gay like the 

10 French, who are one eternal smile of self-complacency, tor- 
tured into affectation, or spun out into languid indifference, nor 
are they voluptuous and immersed in sensual indolence, like the 
Italians; but they have that sort of intermittent, fitful, irregular 
gaiety, which is neither worn out by habit, nor deadened by 

15 passion, but is sought with avidity as it takes the mind by sur- 
prise, is startled by a sense of oddity and incongruity, indulges 
its wayward humours or lively impulses, with perfect freedom 
and lightness of heart, and seizes occasion by the forelock, that 
it may return! to serious business with more cheerfulness, and 

20 have something to beguile the hours of thought or sadness. I 
do not see how there can be high spirits without low ones ; and 
every thing has its price according to circumstances. Perhaps 
we have to pay a heavier tax on pleasure, than some others ; 
what skills it, so long as our good spirits and good hearts enable 

25 us to bear it ? 

"They" (the English), says Froissart, "amused themselves 
sadly after the fashion of their country " — Us se rejoins soient 
tristeme?it selon la coictume de letir pays. They have indeed a way 
of their own. Their mirth is a relaxation from gravity, a challenge 

30 to dull care to be gone ; and one is not always clear at first, 
whether the appeal is successful. The cloud may still hang on 
the brow ; the ice may not thaw at once. To help them out 
in their new character is an act of charity. Any thing short of 
hanging or drowning is something to begin with. They do not 



MERRY ENGLAND 199 

enter into their amusements the less doggedly because they 
may plague others. They like a thing the better for hitting 
them a rap on the knuckles, for making their blood tingle. 
They do not dance or sing, but they make good cheer — "eat, • 
drink, and are merry." No people are fonder of field-sports, 5 
Christmas gambols, or practical jests. Blindman's-buff, hunt-the- 
slipper, hot-cockles, and snap-dragon, are all approved English 
games, full of laughable surprises and " hair-breadth 'scapes," 
and serve to amuse the w^inter fire-side after the roast-beef and 
plum-pudding, the spiced ale and roasted crab, thrown (hissing- 10 
hot) into the foaming tankard. Punch (not the liquor, but the 
puppet) is not, I fear, of English origin ; but there is no place, 
I take it, where he finds himself more at home or meets a more 
joyous welcome, where he collects greater crowds at the corners 
of streets, where he opens the eyes or distends the cheeks 15 
wider, or where the bangs and blows, the uncouth gestures, 
ridiculous anger and screaming voice of the chief performer 
excite more boundless merriment or louder bursts of laughter 
among all ranks and sorts of people. An English theatre is the 
very throne of pantomime ; nor do I believe that the gallery and 20 
boxes of Drury-lane or Covent-garden filled on the proper occa- 
sion with holiday folks (big or little) yield the palm for undis- 
guised, tumultuous, inextinguishable laughter to any spot in 
Europe. I do not speak of the refinement of the mirth (this 
is no fastidious speculation) but of its cordiality, on the return 25 
of these long looked-for and licensed periods ; and I may add 
here, by way of illustration, that the English common people 
are a sort of grown children, spoiled and sulky perhaps, but 
full of glee and merriment, when their attention is drawn off by 
some sudden and striking object. The May-pole is almost gone 30 
out of fashion among us : but May-day, besides its flowering 
hawthorns and its pearly dews, has still its boasted exhibi- 
tion of painted chimney-sweepers and their Jack-o'-the-Green, 
whose tawdry finery, bedizened faces, unwonted gestures, and 



200 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

short-lived pleasures call forth good-humoured smiles and looks 
of sympathy in the spectators. There is no place where trap-ball, 
fives, prison-base, foot-ball, quoits, bowls are better understood 
or more successfully practised ; and the very names of a cricket 
5 bat and ball make English fingers tingle. What happy days must 
" Long Robinson " have passed in getting ready his wickets and 
mending his bats, who when two of the fingers of his right-hand 
were struck off by the violence of a ball, had a screw fastened 
to it to hold the bat, and with the other hand still sent the ball 

10 thundering against the boards that bounded Old Lord's cricket- 
ground I What delightful hours must have been his in looking 
forward to the matches that were to come, in recounting the 
feats he had performed in those that were past ! I have myself 
whiled away whole mornings in seeing him strike the ball (like 

15 a countryman mowing with a scythe) to the farthest extremity 
of the smooth, level, sun-burnt ground, and with long, awkward 
strides count the notches that made victory sure ! Then again, 
cudgel-playing, quarter-staff, bull and badger-baiting, cock-fight- 
ing are almost the peculiar diversions of this island, and often 

20 objected to us as barbarous and cruel ; horse-racing is the delight 
and the ruin of numbers ; and the noble science of boxing is 
all our own. Foreigners can scarcely understand how we can 
squeeze pleasure out of this pastime ; the luxury of hard blows 
given or received; the joy of the ring; nor the perseverance 

25 of the combatants.-^ The English also excel, or are not excelled 

1 " The gentle and free passage of arms at Ashby " was, we are told, so called 
by the Chroniclers of the time, on account of the feats of horsemanship and the 
quantity of knightly blood that was shed. This last circumstance was perhaps 
necessary to qualify it with the epithet of " gentle," in the opinion of some of 
these historians. I think the reason why the English are the bravest nation on 
earth is, that the thought of blood or a delight in cruelty is not the chief excite- 
ment with them. Where it is, there is necessarily a reaction : for though it may 
add to our eagerness and savage ferocity in inflicting wounds, it does not enable 
us to endure them with greater patience. The English are led to the attack or 
sustain it equally well, because they fight as they box, not out of malice, but to 
shovi plitck and manhood. Fair flay and old England for ever ! This is the only 
bravery that will stand the test. There is the same determination and spirit shown 



MERRY ENGLAND 20I 

in wiring a hare, in stalking a deer, in shooting, fishing, and 

hunting. England to this day boasts her Robin Hood and his 

merry men, that stout archer and outlaw, and patron-saint of 

the sporting-calendar. What a cheerful sound is that of the 

hunters, issuing from the autumnal wood and sweeping over 5 

hill and dale ! 

— "A cry more tuneable 
Was never halloo'd to by hound or horn." 

What sparkling richness in the scarlet coats of the riders, what 
a glittering confusion in the pack, what spirit in the horses, what 10 
eagerness in the followers on foot, as they disperse over the 
plain, or force their way over hedge and ditch ! Surely, the 
coloured prints and pictures of these, hung up in gentlemen's 
halls and village alehouses, however humble as works of art, 
have more life and health and spirit in them, and mark the pith 15 
and nerve of the national character more creditably than the 
mawkish, sentimental, affected designs of Theseus and Pirithous, 
and ^neas and Dido, pasted on foreign salons ct manger^ and 
the interior of country-houses. If our tastes are not epic, nor 
our pretensions lofty, they are simple and our own ; and we 20 
may possibly enjoy our native rural sports, and the rude remem- 
brances of them, with the truer relish on this account, that they 
are suited to us and we to them. The English nation, too, are 
naturally " brothers of the angle." This pursuit implies just that 
mixture of patience and pastime, of vacancy and thoughtfulness, 25 
of idleness and business, of pleasure and of pain, which is suited 

in resistance as in attack ; but not the same pleasure in getting a cut with a sabre 
as in giving one. There is, therefore, always a certain degree of effeminacy mixed 
up with any approach to cruelty, since both have their source in the same princi- 
ple, viz. an over-valuing of pain {ci). This was the reason the French (having the 
best cause and the best general in the world) ran away at Waterloo, because they 
were inflamed, furious, drunk with the blood of their enemies, but when it came 
to their turn, wanting the same stimulus, they were panic-struck, and their hearts 
and their senses failed them all at once. 

(a) Vanity is the same half-witted principle, compared with pride. It leaves 
men in the lurch when it is most needed ; is mortified at being reduced to stand 
on the defensive, and relinquishes the field to its more surly antagonist. 



202 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

to the genius of an Englishman, and as I suspect, of no one else 
in the same degree. He is eminently gifted to stand in the sit- 
uation assigned by Dr. Johnson to the angler, " at one end of a 
rod with a worm at the other." I should suppose no other lan- 
5 guage can show such a book as an often-mentioned one, Walton's 
Complete Angler, — so full of naivete, of unaffected sprightliness, 
of busy trifling, of dainty songs, of refreshing brooks, of shady 
arbours, of happy thoughts and of the herb called Heai't 'j Ease ! 
Some persons can see neither the wit nor wisdom of this genuine 

lo volume, as if a book as well as a man might not have a personal 
character belonging to it, amiable, venerable from the spirit of 
joy and thorough goodness it manifests, independently of acute 
remarks or scientific discoveries : others object to the cruelty of 
Walton's theory and practice of trout-fishing — for my part, I 

15 should as soon charge an infant with cruelty for killing a fly, 
and I feel the same sort of pleasure in reading his book as I 
should have done in the company of this happy, child-like old 
man, watching his ruddy cheek, his laughing eye, the kindness 
of his heart, and the dexterity of his hand in seizing his finny 

20 prey ! It must be confessed, there is often an odd sort of mate- 
riality in English sports and recreations. I have known several 
persons, whose existence consisted wholly in manual exercises, 
and all whose enjoyments lay at their finger-ends. Their greatest 
happiness was in cutting a stick, in mending a cabbage-net, in 

25 digging a hole in the ground, in hitting a mark, turning a lathe, 
or in something else of the same kind, at which they had a cer- 
tain hiack. Well is it when we can amuse ourselves with such 
trifles and without injury to others ! This class of character, 
which the Spectator has immortalised in the person of Will 

30 Wimble, is sdll common among younger brothers and retired 
gentlemen of small incomes in town or country. The Cockney 
character is of our English growth, as this intimates a feverish 
fidgety delight in rural sights and sounds, and a longing wish, 
after the turmoil and confinement of a city-life, to transport 



MERRY ENGLAND 203 

one's-self to the freedom and breathing sweetness of a country 
retreat. London is half suburbs. The suburbs of Paris are a 
desert, and you see nothing but crazy wind-mills, stone-walls, and 
a few straggling visitants in spots where in England you would 
find a thousand villas, a thousand terraces crowned with their 5 
own delights, or be stunned with the noise of bowling-greens and 
tea-gardens, or stifled with the fumes of tobacco mingling with 
fragrant shrubs, or the clouds of dust raised by half the popula- 
tion of the metropolis panting and toiling in search of a mouth- 
ful of fresh air. The Parisian is, perhaps, as well (or better) 10 
contented with himself wherever he is, stewed in his shop or his 
garret ; the Londoner is miserable in these circumstances, and 
glad to escape from them.^ Let no one object to the gloomy 
appearance of a London Sunday, compared with a Parisian one. 
It is a part of our politics and our religion : we would not have 1 5 
James the First's Book of Sports thrust down our throats : and 
besides, it is a part of our character to do one thing at a time, 
and not to be dancing a jig and on our knees in the same breath. 
It is true the Englishman spends his Sunday evening at the ale- 
house — 20 

"And e'en on Sunday 

Drank with Kirton Jean till Monday" — 

but he only unbends and waxes mellow by degrees, and sits 
soaking till he can neither sit, stand, nor go : it is his vice, and 
a beastly one it is, but not a proof of any inherent distaste to 25 
mirth or good-fellowship. Neither can foreigners throw the car- 
nival in our teeth with any effect : those who have seen it (at 
Florence, for example,) will say that it is duller than any thing 
in England. Our Bartholomew-Fair is Queen Mab herself to it ! 
What can be duller than a parcel of masks moving about the 30 
streets and looking as grave and monotonous as possible from 
day to day, and with the same lifeless formality in their limbs 

1 The English are fond of change of scene ; the French of change of posture ; 
the Italians like to sit still and do nothing. 



204 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and gestures as in their features ? One might as well expect 
variety and spirit in a procession of waxwork. We must be hard 
run indeed, when we have recourse to a pasteboard proxy to set 
off our mirth : a mask may be a very good cover for licentious- 
5 ness (though of that I saw no signs), but is a very bad exponent 
of wit and humour. I should suppose there is more drollery and 
unction in the caricatures in Gilray's shop-window, thai;! in all 
the masks in Italy, without exception.^ 

The humour of English writing and description has often been 

10 wondered at ; and it flows from the same source as the merry 
traits of our character. A degree of barbarism and rusticity 
seems necessary to the perfection of humour. The droll and 
laughable depend on peculiarity and incongruity of character. 
But with the progress of refinement, the peculiarities of individ- 

1 5 uals and of classes wear out or lose their sharp, abrupt edges ; 
nay, a certain slowness and dulness of understanding is required 
to be struck with odd and unaccountable appearances, for which 
a greater facility of apprehension can sooner assign an explana- 
tion that breaks the force of the seeming absurdity, and to 

2o which a wider scope of imagination is more easily reconciled. 
Clowns and country people are more amused, are more disposed 
to laugh and make sport of the dress of strangers, because from 
their ignorance the surprise is greater, and they cannot conceive 
any thing to be natural or proper to which they are unused. 

.'^5 Without a given portion of hardness and repulsiveness of feeling 
the ludicrous cannot well exist. Wonder, and curiosity, the attri- 
butes of inexperience, enter greatly into its composition. Now 
it appears to me that the English are (or were) just at that 
mean point between intelligence and obtuseness, which must 

30 produce the most abundant and happiest crop of humour. 

1 Bells are peculiar to England. They jingle them in Italy during the carnival 
as boys do with us at Shrovetide ; but they have no notion of ringing them. The 
sound of village bells never cheers you in travelling, nor have you the lute or 
cittern in their stead. Yet the expression of " Merry Bells " is a favourite, and 
not one of the least appropriate in our language. 



MERRY ENGLAND 205 

Absurdity and singularity glide over the French mind without 
jarring or jostling with it ; or they evaporate in levity : — with 
the Italians they are lost in indolence or pleasure. The ludicrous 
takes hold of the English imagination, and clings to it with all 
its ramifications. We resent any difference or peculiarity of 5 
appearance at first, and yet, having not much malice at our 
hearts, we are glad to turn it into a jest — we are liable to be 
offended, and as willing to be pleased — struck with oddity 
from not knowing what to make of it, we wonder and burst out 
a laughing at the eccentricity of others, while we follow our own 10 
bent from wilfulness or simplicity, and thus afford them, in our 
turn, matter for the indulgence of the comic vein. It is possible 
that a greater refinement of manners may give birth to finer 
distinctions of satire and a nicer tact for the ridiculous : but our 
insular situation and character are, I should say, most likely to 1 5 
foster, as they have in fact fostered, the greatest quantity of 
natural and striking humour, in spite of our plodding tenacious- 
ness, and want both of gaiety and quickness of perception. A 
set of raw recruits with their awkward movements and unbend- 
ing joints are laughable enough : but they cease to be so, when 20 
they have once been drilled into discipline and uniformity. So 
it is with nations that lose their angular points and grotesque 
qualities with education and intercourse : but it is in a mixed 
state of manners that comic humour chiefly flourishes, for, in 
order that the drollery may not be lost, we must have spectators 25 
of the passing scene who are able to appreciate and embody its 
most remarkable features, — wits as well as butts for ridicule. 
I shall mention two names in this department which may serve 
to redeem the national character from absolute dulness and 
solemn pretence, — Fielding and Hogarth. These were thorough 30 
specimens of true English humour ; yet both were grave men. 
In reality, too high a pitch of animal spirits runs away with the 
imagination, instead of helping it to reach the goal ; is inclined 
to take the jest for granted when it ought to work it out with 



206 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

patient and marked touches, and it ends in vapid flippancy and 
impertinence. Among our neighbours on the Continent, Moliere 
and Rabelais carried the freedom of wit and humour to an 
almost incredible height ; but they rather belonged to the old 
5 French school, and even approach and exceed the English licence 
and extravagance of conception. I do not consider Congreve's 
wit (though it belongs to us) as coming under the article here 
spoken of ; for his genius is any thing but merry. Lord Byron 
was in the habit of railing at the spirit of our good old comedy, 

10 and of abusing Shakspeare's Clowns and Fools, which he said 
the refinement of the French and Italian stage would not endure 
and which only our grossness and puerile taste could tolerate. 
In this I agree with him ; and it is pat to my purpose. I flatter 
myself that we are almost the only people who understand and 

15 relish nonsense. We are not " merry and wise," but indulge our 
mirth to excess and folly. When we trifle, we trifle in good 
earnest ; and having once relaxed our hold of the helm, drift 
idly down the stream, and delighted with the change, are tossed 
about " by every little breath " of whim or caprice, 

20 "That under Heaven is blown." 

All we then want is to proclaim a truce with reason, and to be 
pleased with as little expense of thought or pretension to wisdom 
as possible. This licensed fooling is carried to its very utmost 
length in Shakspeare, and in some other of our elder dramatists, 

25 without, perhaps, sufficient warrant or the same excuse. Noth- 
ing can justify this extreme relaxation but extreme tension. 
Shakspeare's trifling does indeed tread upon the very borders 
of vacancy : his meaning often hangs by the very slenderest 
threads. For this he might be blamed if it did not take away 

30 our breath to follow his eagle flights, or if he did not at other 
times make the cordage of our hearts crack. After our heads 
ache with thinking, it is fair to play the fool. The clowns were 
as proper an appendage to the gravity of our antique literature, 



MERRY ENGLAND 20/ 

as fools and dwarfs were to the stately dignity of courts and 
noble houses in former days. Of all people, they have the best 
right to claim a total exemption from rules and rigid formality, 
who, when they have any thing of importance to do, set about 
it with the greatest earnestness and perseverance, and are gener- 5 
ally grave and sober to a proverb. "^ Poor Swift, who wrote 
more idle or nonsense verses than any man, was the severest of 
moralists ; and his feelings and observations morbidly acute. 
Did not Lord Byron himself follow up his Childe Harold with 
his Don Juan ? — not that I insist on what he did as any illustra- 10 
tion of the English character. He was one of the English 
Nobility, not one of the English People ; and his occasional ease 
and familiarity were in my mind equally constrained and affected, 
whether in relation to the pretensions of his rank or the efforts 
of his genius. 1 5 

They ask you in France, how you pass your time in England 
without amusements ; and can with difficulty believe that there are 
theatres in London, still less that they are larger and handsomer 
than those in Paris. That we should have comic actors, " they 
own, surprises them." They judge of the English character 20 
in the lump as one great jolter-head, containing all the stu- 
pidity of the country, as the large ball at the top of the Dis- 
pensary in Warwick-lane, from its resemblance to a gilded pill, 
has been made to represent the whole pharmacopoeia and pro- 
fessional quackery of the kingdom. They have no more notion, 25 
for instance, how we should have such an actor as Liston on our 
stage, than if we were to tell them we have parts performed by 
a sea-otter ; nor if they were to see him, would they be much 
the wiser, or know what to think of his unaccountable twitches 
of countenance or non-descript gestures, of his teeth chattering 30 
in his head, his eyes that seem dropping from their sockets, his 
nose that is tickled by a jest as by a feather, and shining with 

1 The strict formality of French serious writing is resorted to as a foil to the 
natural levity of their character. 



' 208 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

self-complacency as if oiled, his ignorant conceit, his gaping 
stupor, his lumpish vivacity in Lubin Log or Tony Lumpkin ; 
for as our rivals do not wind up the machine to such a deter- 
mined intensity of purpose, neither have they any idea of its 
5 running down to such degrees of imbecility and folly, or com- 
ing to an absolute standstill and lack of meaning, nor can they 
enter into or be amused with the contrast. No people ever 
laugh heartily who can give a reason for their doing so : and I 
believe the English in general are not yet in this predicament. 

10 They are not metaphysical, but very much in a state of nature ; 
and this is one main ground why I give them credit for being 
merry, notwithstanding appearances. Their mirth is not the 
mirth of vice or desperation, but of innocence and a native 
wildness. They do not cavil or boggle at niceties, or merely 

15 come to the edge of a joke, but break their necks over it with 
a wanton " Here goes," where others make a piivuette and 
stand upon decorum. The French cannot, however, be per- 
suaded of the excellence of our comic stage, nor of the store 
we set by it. When they ask what amusements we have, it is 

20 plain they can never have heard of Mrs. Jordan, nor King, nor 
Bannister, nor Suett, nor Munden, nor Lewis, nor little Simmons, 
nor Dodd, and Parsons, and Emery, and Miss Pope, and Miss 
Farren, and all those who even in my time have gladdened a 
nation and " made life's business like a summer's dream." Can 

25 I think of them, and of their names that glittered in the play- 
bills when I was young, exciting all the flutter of hope and 
expectation of seeing them in their favourite parts of Nell, or 
Little Pickle, or Touchstone, or Sir Peter Teazle, or Lenitive in 
the Prize, or Lingo, or Crabtree, or Nipperkin, or old Dorn- 

30 ton, or Ranger, or the Copper Captain, or Lord Sands, or Filch, 
or Moses, or Sir Andrew Aguecheek, or Acres, or Elbow, or 
Hodge, or Flora, or the Duenna, or Lady Teazle, or Lady 
Grace, or of the gaiety that sparkled in all eyes, and the 



MERRY ENGLAND 209 

delight that overflowed all hearts, as they glanced before us in 

these parts, 

" Throwing a gaudy shadow upon Hfe," — - 

and not feel my heart yearn within me, or couple the thoughts 
of England and the spleen together ? Our cloud has at least its 5 
■ rainbow tints : ours is not one long polar night of cold and dul- 
ness, but we have the gleaming lights of fancy to amuse us, the 
household fires of truth and genius to warm us. We can go to 
a play and see Liston ; or stay at home and read Roderick 
Random ; or have Hogarth's prints of Marriage a la Mode 10 
hanging round our room. " Tut ! there's livers even in Eng- 
land," as well as " out of it." We are not quite 'Cos. forlorn hope 
of humanity, the last of nations. The French look at us across 
the Channel, and seeing nothing but water and a cloudy mist, 
think that this is England. 15 

" What's our Britain 

In the world's volume ? In a great pool a swan's nest." 

If they have any farther idea of us, it is of George III. and our 
Jack tars, the House of Lords and House of Commons, and 
this is no great addition to us. To go beyond this, to talk of 20 
arts and elegances as having taken up their abode here, or to 
say that Mrs. Abington was equal to Mademoiselle Mars, and 
that we at one time got up the School for Scandal, as they do 
the Misanthrope, is to persuade them that Iceland is a pleasant 
summer-retreat, or to recommend the whale-fishery as a clas- 25 
sical amusement. The French are the cockneys of Europe, and 
have no idea how any one can exist out of Paris, or be alive 
without incessant grimace and jabber. Yet what imports it ? 
What 1 though the joyous train I have just enumerated were, 
perhaps, never heard of in the precincts of the Palais-Royal, is 30 
it not enough that they gave pleasure where they were, to those 
who saw and heard them ? Must our laugh, to be sincere, have 



2IO SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

its echo on the other side of the water ? Had not the French 
their favourites and their enjoyments at the time, that we knew 
nothing of ? Why then should we not have ours (and boast of 
them too) without their leave ? A monopoly of self-conceit is 
5 not a monopoly of all other advantages. The English, when 
they go abroad, do not take away the prejudice against them 
by their looks. We seem duller and sadder than we are. As I 
write this, I am sitting in the open air in a beautiful valley near 
Vevey : Clarens is on my left, the Dent de Jamant is behind 
lo me, the rocks of Meillerie opposite : under my feet is a green 
bank, enamelled with white and purple flowers, in which a dew- 
drop here and there still glitters with pearly light — 

" And gaudy butterflies flutter around." 

Intent upon the scene and upon the thoughts that stir within 

15 me, I conjure up the cheerful passages of my life, and a crowd 
of happy images appear before me. No one would see it in my 
looks — my eyes grow dull and fixed, and I seem rooted to the 
spot, as all this phantasmagoria passes in review before me, 
glancing a reflex lustre on the face of the world and nature. 

20 But the traces of pleasure, in my case, sink into an absorbent 
ground of thoughtful melancholy, and require to be brought 
out by time and circumstances, or (as the critics tell you) by 
the varnish of style ! 

The comfort, on which the English lay so much stress, is of the 

25 same character, and arises from the same source as their mirth. 
Both exist by contrast and a sort of contradiction. The English 
are certainly the most uncomfortable of all people in them- 
selves, and therefore it is that they stand in need of every kind of 
comfort and accommodation. The least thing puts them out of 

30 their way, and therefore every thing must be in its place. They 
are mightily offended at disagreeable tastes and smells, and 
therefore they exact the utmost neatness and nicety. They are 
sensible of heat and cold, and therefore they cannot exist, unless 



MERRY ENGLAND 211 

every thing is snug and warm, or else open and airy, where they 
are. They must have " all appliances and means to boot." 
They are afraid of interruption and intrusion, and therefore 
they shut themselves up in in-door enjoyments and by their 
own firesides. It is not that they require luxuries (for that im- 5 
plies a high degree of epicurean indulgence and gratification), 
but they cannot do without their comforts ; that is, whatever 
tends to supply their physical wants, and ward off physical pain 
and annoyance. As they have not a fund of animal spirits and 
enjoyments in themselves, they cling to external objects for 10 
support, and derive solid satisfaction from the ideas of order, 
cleanliness, plenty, property, and domestic quiet, as they seek 
for diversion from odd accidents and grotesque surprises, and 
have the highest possible relish not of voluptuous softness, but 
of hard knocks and dry blows, as one means of ascertaining 15 
their personal identity. 



OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO 
HAVE SEEN 

"Come like shadows — so depart." 

B it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as 

the defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, 
however, he would undertake neither, I suppose I must do both 
5 — a task for which he would have been much fitter, no less 
from the temerity than the felicity of his pen — - 

" Never so sure our rapture to create 
As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate." 

Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a common-place 

10 piece of business of it ; but I should be loth the idea was entirely 
lost, and besides, I may avail myself of some hints of his in the 
progress of it. I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of 
the ideas of other people than expounder of my own. I pursue 
the one too far into paradox or mysticism ; the others I am 

15 not bound to follow farther than I like, or than seems fair and 
reasonable. 

On the question being started, A said, " I suppose the 

two first persons you would choose to see would be the two 
greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. 

20 Locke ? " In this A , as usual, reckoned without his host. 

Every one burst out a laughing at the expression of B 's 

face, in which impatience was restrained by courtesy. " Yes, 
the greatest names," he stammered out hastily, " but they 
were not persons — not persons." — " Not persons ? " said 

25 A , looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his 

triumph might be premature. " That is," rejoined B , " not 



PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 213 

characters, you know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you 
mean the' Essay on the Human Understanding, and the Principia, 
which we have to this day. Beyond their contents there is noth- 
ing personally interesting in the men. But what we want to see 
any one bodily for, is when there is something peculiar, striking 5 
in the individuals, more than we can learn from their writings, 
and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton 
were very like Kneller's portraits of them. But who could paint 

Shakspeare?" — "Ay," retorted A , "there it is; then I 

suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton instead.-"' 10 

— " No," said B , " neither. I have seen so much of 

Shakspeare on the stage and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and 
on mantelpieces, that I am quite tired of the everlasting repeti- 
tion : and as to Milton's face, the impressions that have come 
down to us of it I do not like ; it is too starched and puritanical ; 1 5 
and I should be afraid of losing some of the manna of his poetry 
in the leaven of his countenance and the precisian's band and 

gown." — "I shall guess no more," said A . "Who is it, 

then, you would like to see ' in his habit as he lived,' if you had 

your choice of the whole range of English literature ? " B 20 

then named Sir Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend 
of Sir Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel 
the greatest pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment 
in their night-gown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greet- 
ing with them. At this A laughed outright, and conceived 25 

B was jesting with him ; but as no one followed his example, 

he thought there might be something in it, and waited for an 

explanation in a state of whimsical suspense. B- then (as 

well as I can remember a conversation that passed twenty years 
ago — how time slips !) went on as follows. " The reason why 30 
I pitch upon these two authors is, that their writings are riddles, 
and they themselves the most mysterious of personages. They 
resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and 
doubtful oracles ; and I should like to ask them the meaning of 



214 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

what no mortal but themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. 
There is Dr. Johnson : I have no curiosity, no strange uncer- 
tainty about him : he and Boswell together have pretty well let 
me into the secret of what passed through his mind. He and 
5 other writers like him are sufficiently explicit : my friends, whose 
repose I should be tempted to disturb, (were it in my power) 
are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable. 

" And call up him who left half-told 
The story of Cambuscan bold." 

10 "When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose-composi- 
tion (the Ufti-burial) I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, 
at the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure ; or it is 
like a stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and 
I would invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it. 

15 Besides, who would not be curious to see the lineaments of a 
man who, having himself been twice married, wished that man- 
kind were propagated like trees ! As to Fulke Greville, he is 
like nothing but one of his own ' Prologues spoken by the ghost 
of an old king of Ormus,' a truly formidable and inviting per- 

20 sonage : his style is apocalyptical, cabalistical, a knot worthy of 
such an apparition to untie ; and for the unravelling a passage 
or two, I would stand the brunt of an encounter with so por- 
tentous a commentator!" — "I am afraid in that case," said 
A , " that if the mystery were once cleared up, the merit 

25 might be lost;" — and turning to me, whispered a friendly 
apprehension, that while B — — continued to admire these old 
crabbed authors, he would never become a popular writer. 
Dr. Donne was mentioned as a writer of the same period, with 
a very interesting countenance, whose history was singular, and 

30 whose meaning was often quite as imcomeatabk, without a per- 
sonal citation from the dead, as that of any of his contemporaries. 
The volume was produced ; and while some one was expatiating 
on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of the portrait prefixed to 



PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 21 5 

the old edition, A got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming, 

" What have we here ? " read the following : — 

" Here lies a She-Sun and a He-Moon there, 
She gives the best light to his sphere 

Or each is both and all, and so 5 

They unto one another nothing owe." 

There was no resisting this, till B , seizing the volume, 

turned to the beautiful " Lines to his Mistress," dissuading her 
from accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused 
features and a faltering tongue. 10 

" By our first strange and fatal interview. 
By all desires which thereof did ensue. 
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse 
Which my words' masculine persuasive force 
Begot in thee, and by the memory 1 5 

Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten'd me, 
I calmly beg. But by thy father's wrath. 
By all pains which want and divorcement hath, 
I conjure thee ; and all the oaths which I 

And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy 20 

Here I unswear, and overswear them thus, 
Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous. 
Temper, oh fair Love ! love's impetuous rage, 
Be my true mistress still, not my feign'd Page ; 
I'll go, and, by thy kind leave, leave behind 25 

Thee, only worthy to nurse it in my mind. 
Thirst to come back ; oh, if thou die before, 
My soul from other lands to thee shall soar. 
Thy (else Almighty) beauty cannot move 

Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, 30 

Nor tame wild Boreas" harshness ; thou hast read 
How roughly he in pieces shiver'd 
Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov'd. 
Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have prov'd 
Dangers unurg'd : Feed on this flattery, ,e 

That absent lovers one with th' other be. 
Dissemble nothing, not a boy ; nor change 
Thy body's habit, nor mind ; be not strange 
To thyself only. All will spy in thy face 



2l6 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

A blushing, womanly, discovering grace. 
Richly cloth'd apes are call'd apes, and as soon 
Eclips'd as bright we call the moon the moon. 
Men of France, changeable cameleons, 
5 Spittles of diseases, shops of fashions, 

Love's fuellers, and the rightest company 
Of players, which upon the world's stage be. 
Will quickly know thee. . . . O stay here ! for thee 
England is only a worthy gallery, 

ID To walk in expectation; till from thence 

Our greatest King call thee to his presence. 
When I am gone, dream me some happiness, 
Nor let thy looks our long hid love confess. 
Nor praise, nor dispraise me ; nor bless, nor curse 

15 Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse 

With midnight's startings, crying out. Oh, oh. 
Nurse, oh, my love is slain, I saw him go 
O'er the white Alps alone ; I saw him, I, 
Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die. 

20 Augur me better chance, except dread'Jove 

Think it enough for me to have had thy love." 

Some one then inquired of B if we could not see from 

the window the Temple-walk in which Chaucer used to take his 
exercise ; and on his name being put to the vote, I was pleased 

25 to find that there was a general sensation in his favour in all 

but A , who said something about the ruggedness of the 

metre, and even objected to the quaintness of the orthography. 
I was vexed at this superficial gloss, pertinaciously reducing 
every thing to its own trite level, and asked if he did not think 

30 it would be worth while to scan the eye that had first greeted 
the Muse in that dim twilight and early dawn of English litera- 
ture ; to see the head, round which the visions of fancy must 
have played like gleams of inspiration or a sudden glory ; to 
watch those lips that " lisped in numbers, for the numbers 

35 came " — as by a miracle, or as if the dumb should speak ? Nor 
was it alone that he had been the first to tune his native tongue 
(however imperfectly to modern ears) ; but he was himself a 
noble, manly character, standing before his age and striving 



PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 21/ 

to advance it ; a pleasant humourist withal, who has not only 
handed down to us the living manners of his time, but had, no 
doubt, store of curious and quaint devices, and would make as 
hearty a companion as Mine Host of the Tabard. His interview 
with Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have 5 
seen Chaucer in company with the author of the Decameron, 
and have heard them exchange their best stories together, — the 
Squire's Tale against the story of the Falcon, the Wife of Bath's 
Prologue against the Adventures of Friar Albert. How fine to 
see the high mysterious brow which learning then wore, re- 10 
lieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, and by 
the courtesies of genius. Surely, the thoughts and feelings 
which passed through the minds of these great revivers of learn- 
ing, these Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must have 
stamped an expression on their features, as different from the 15 
moderns as their books, and well worth the perusal. " Dante," 
I continued, " is as interesting a person as his own Ugolino, one 
whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly devour in order to 
penetrate his spirit, and the only one of the Italian poets I should 
care much to see. There is a fine portrait of Ariosto by no less 20 
a hand than Titian's ; light, Moorish, spirited, but not answering 
our idea. The same artist's large colossal profile of Peter Aretine 
is the only likeness of the kind that has the effect of conversing 
with ' the mighty dead,' and this is truly spectral, ghastly, necro- 
mantic." B put it to me if I should like to see Spenser 25 

as well as Chaucer ; and I answered without hesitation, " No ; 
for that his beauties were ideal, visionary, not palpable or per- 
sonal, and therefore connected with less curiosity about the man. 
His poetry was the essence of romance, a very halo round the 
bright orb of fancy ; and the bringing in the individual might 30 
dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come up to the 
mellifluous cadence of his verse ; no form but of a winged 
angel could vie with the airy shapes he has described. He was 
(to our apprehensions) rather a ' creature of the element, that 



2l8 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

lived in the rainbow and played in the plighted clouds,' than an 
ordinary mortal. Or if he did appear, I should wish it to be as 
a mere vision, like one of his own pageants, and that he should 
pass by unquestioned like a dream or sound — 

5 ' That was Arion crown'd : 

So went he playing on the wat'ry plain ! ' " 

Captain C. muttered something about Columbus, and M. C. 
hinted at the Wandering Jew ; but the last was set aside as 
spurious, and the first made over to the New World. 

10 " I should like," said Miss D , " to have seen Pope talk- 
ing with Patty Blount ; and I have seen Goldsmith." Every one 

turned round to look at Miss D , as if by so doing they too 

could get a sight of Goldsmith. 

" Where," asked a harsh croaking voice, " was Dr. Johnson 

15 in the years 1745-6? He did not write any thing that we 
know of, nor is there any account of him in Boswell during 
those two years. Was he in Scotland with the Pretender ? He 
seems to have passed through the scenes in the Highlands in 
company with Boswell many years after ' with lack-lustre eye,' 

20 yet as if they were familiar to him, or associated in his mind 
with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an 
additional reason for my liking him ; and I would give some- 
thing to have seen him seated in the tent with the youthful 
Majesty of Britain, and penning the Proclamation to all true 

25 subjects and adherents of the legitimate Government." 

" I thought," said A , turning short round upon B , 

" that you of the Lake School did not like Pope ? " — " Not like 
Pope ! My dear sir, you must be under a mistake — I can read 
him over and over for ever ! " — " Why certainly, the Essay on 

30 Man must be allowed to be a master-piece." — " It may be so, 
but I seldom look into it." — " Oh ! then it's his Satires you 
admire ? " — '' No, not his Satires, but his friendly Epistles and 
his compliments." — " Compliments ! I did not know he ever 



PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 219 

made any." — " The finest," said B , " that were ever paid 

by the wit of man. Each of them is worth an estate for life — 
nay, is an immortality. There is that superb one to Lord 
Cornbury : 

' Despise low joys, low gains ; 5 

Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains ; 
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.' 

" Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise ? 

And then that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield 

(however little deserved), when, speaking of the House of 10 

Lords, he adds — 

' Conspicuous scene ! another yet is nigh, 
(More silent far) where kings and poets He ; 
Where Murray (long enough his Country's pride) 
Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde ! ' 15 

" And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses 

Lord Bolingbroke — 

' Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine, 
Oh! all-accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine?' 

" Or turn," continued B , with a slight hectic on his cheek 20 

and his eye glistening, " to his list of early friends : 

' But why then publish ? Granville the polite, 
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ; 
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise. 
And Congreve loved and Swift endured my lays: 25 

The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, 
Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head ; 
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before) 
Received with open arms one poet more. 

Happy my studies, if by these approved! 30 

Happier their author, if by these beloved ! 
From these the world will judge of men and books. 
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.' " 

Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the book, 
he said, " Do you think I would not wish to have been friends 35 
with such a man as this ? " 



220 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

" What say you to Dryden ? " — " He rather made a show of 
himself, and courted popularity in that lowest temple of Fame, 
a coffee-house, so as in some measure to vulgarize one's idea 
of him. Pope, on the contrary, reached the very bean ideal of 
5 what a poet's life should be ; and his fame while living seemed 
to be an emanation from that which was to circle his name after 
death. He was so far enviable (and one would feel proud to 
have witnessed the rare spectacle in him) that he was almost 
the only poet and man of genius who met with his reward on 

lo this side of the tomb, who realized in friends, fortune, the esteem 
of the world, the most sanguine hopes of a youthful ambition, 
and who found that sort of patronage from the great during his 
lifetime which they would be thought anxious to bestow upon 
him after his death. Read Gay's verses to him on his supposed 

1 5 return from Greece, after his translation of Homer was finished, 
and say if you would not gladly join the bright procession that 
welcomed him home, or see it once more land at Whitehall-stairs." 

— " Still," said Miss D , " I would rather have seen him 

talking with Patty Blount, or riding by in a coronet-coach with 

20 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ! " 

E , who was deep in a game of piquet at the other end 

of the room, whispered to M. C. to ask if Junius would not be 

a fit person to invoke from the dead. " Yes," said B , 

" provided he would agree to lay aside his mask." 

25 We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding was 
mentioned as a candidate : only one, however, seconded the 
proposition. " Richardson ? " — " By all means, but only to 
look at him through the glass-door of his back-shop, hard at 
work upon one of his novels (the most extraordinary contrast 

30 that ever was presented between an author and his works), but 
not to let him come behind his counter lest he should want you 
to turn customer, nor to go upstairs with him, lest he should 
offer, to read the first manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison, 
which was originally written in eight and twenty volumes 



PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 221 

octavo, or get out the letters of his female correspondents, to 
prove that Joseph Andrews was low." 

There was but one statesman in the whole of English history 
that any one expressed the least desire to see — Oliver Crom- 
well, with his fine, frank, rough, pimply face, and wily policy ; — 5 
and one enthusiast, John Bunyan, the immortal author of the 
Pilgrim's Progress. It seemed that if he came into the room, 
dreams would follow him, and that each person would nod 
under his golden cloud, " nigh-sphered in Heaven," a canopy as 
strange and stately as any in Homer. 10 

Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's name was 
received with the greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed by 

J. F . He presently superseded both Hogarth and Handel, 

who had been talked of, but then it was on condition that he 
should act in tragedy and comedy, in the play and the farce, 15 
Lear and Wildair and Abel Drugger. What a sight for sore 
eyes that would be ! Who would not part with a year's income 
at least, almost with a year of his natural life, to be present 
at it ? Besides, as he could not act alone, and recitations are 
unsatisfactory things, what a troop he must bring with him — 20 
the silver-tongued Barry, and Quin, and Shuter and Weston, 
and Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I have heard my 
father speak as so great a favourite when he was young ! 
This would indeed be a revival of the dead, the restoring of 
art; and so much the more desirable, as such is the lurking 25 
scepticism mingled with our overstrained admiration of past 
excellence, that though we have the speeches of Burke, the 
portraits of Reynolds, the writings of Goldsmith, and the con- 
versation of Johnson, to show what people could do at that 
period, and to confirm the universal testimony to the merits of yi 
Garrick ; yet, as it was before our time, we have our misgivings, 
as if he was probably after all little better than a Bartlemy- 
fair actor, dressed out to play Macbeth in a scarlet coat and 
laced cocked-hat. For one, I should like to have seen and 



222 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

heard with my own eyes and ears. Certainly, by all accounts, 
if any one was ever moved by the true histrionic czstus, it was 
Garrick. When he followed the Ghost in Hamlet, he did not 
drop the sword, as most actors do behind the scenes, but kept 
5 the point raised the whole way round, so fully was he possessed 
with the idea, or so anxious not to lose sight of his part for a 

moment. Once at a splendid dinner-party at Lord -'s, they 

suddenly missed Garrick, and could not imagine what was 
become of him, till they were drawn to the window by the con- 

lo vulsive screams and peals of laughter of a young negro boy, 
who was rolling on the ground in an ecstasy of delight to see 
Garrick mimicking a turkey-cock in the court-yard, with his 
coat-tail stuck out behind, and in a seeming flutter of feathered 
rage and pride. Of our party only two persons present had 

1 5 seen the British Roscius ; and they seemed as willing as the 
rest to renew their acquaintance with their old favourite. 

We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of this 
fanciful speculation, by a grumbler in a comer, who declared it 
was a shame to make all this rout about a mere player and 

2o farce-writer, to the neglect and exclusion of the fine old drama- 
tists, the contemporaries and rivals of Shakspeare. B said 

he had anticipated this objection when he had named the author 
of Mustapha and Alaham ; and out of caprice insisted upon 
keeping him to represent the set, in preference to the wild hare- 

25 brained enthusiast. Kit Marlowe ; to the sexton of St. Ann's, 
Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and death's-heads ; to 
Deckar, who was but a garrulous proser ; to the voluminous 
Hey wood ; and even to Beaumont and Fletcher, whom we 
might offend by complimenting the wrong author on their 

30 joint productions. Lord Brook, on the contrary, stood quite by 
himself, or in Cowley's words, was " a vast species alone." 
Some one hinted at the circumstance of his being a lord, which 
rather startled B , but he said a ghost would perhaps dis- 
pense with strict etiquette, on being regularly addressed by his 



PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 223 

title. Ben Jonson divided our suffrages pretty equally. Some 
were afraid he would begin to traduce Shakspeare, who was 
not present to defend himself. " If he grows disagreeable," 

it was whispered aloud, " there is G can match him." At 

length, his romantic visit to Drummond of Hawthornden was 5 
mentioned, and turned the scale in his favour. 

B inquired if there was any one that was hanged that I 

would choose to mention? And I answered, Eugene Aram.^ 
The name of the " Admirable Crichton " was suddenly started 
as a splendid example of waste talents, so different from the 10 
generality of his countrymen. This choice was mightily ap- 
proved by a North- Briton present, who declared himself de- 
scended from that prodigy of learning and accomplishment, and 
said he had family-plate in his possession as vouchers for the 

fact, with the initials A. C. — Adfnirable Crichton ! H 1 5 

laughed or rather roared as heartily at this as I should think 
he has done for many years. 

The last-named Mitre-courtier ^ then wished to know whether 
there were any metaphysicians to whom one might be tempted 
to apply the wizard spell ? I replied, there were only six in 20 
modern times deserving the name — Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, 
Hartley, Hume, Leibnitz ; and perhaps Jonathan Edwards, a 
Massachusetts man.'' As to the French, who talked fluently of 
having a'eated this science, there was not a tittle in any of their 
writings, that was not to be found literally in the authors I had 25 
mentioned. [Home Tooke, who might have a claim to come in 

1 See Newgate Calendar for 1758. 

2 B at this time occupied chambers in Mitre court, Fleet street. 

3 Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should come 
in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation together. This great 
and celebrated man in some of his works recommends it to pour a bottle of 
claret into the ground of a morning, and to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. 
So he sometimes enriched the dry and barren soil of speculation with the fine 
aromatic spirit of his genius. His Essays and his Advancement of Learning are 
works of vast depth and scope of observation. The last, though it contains no 
positive discoveries, is a noble chart of the human intellect, and a guide to all 
future inquirers. 



224 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

undei" the head of Grammar, was still living.] None of these 
names seemed to excite much interest, and I did not plead for 
the re-appearance of those who might be thought best fitted 
by the abstracted nature of their studies for the present spirit- 
5 ual and disembodied state, and who, even while on this living 
stage, were nearly divested of common flesh and blood. As 

A with an uneasy, fidgety face was about to put some 

question about Mr. Locke and Dugald Stewart, he was pre- 
vented by M. C. who observed, " If J was here, he would 

lo undoubtedly be for having vip those profound and redoubted 
socialists, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus." I said this 
might be fair enough in him who had read or fancied he had 
read the original works, but I did not see how we could have 
any right to call up these authors to give an account of them- 

15 selves in person till we had looked into their writings. 

By this time it should seem that some rumour of our whim- 
sical deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the initable 
genus in their shadowy abodes, for we received messages from 
several candidates that we had just been thinking of. Gray 

20 declined our invitation, though he had not yet been asked : 
Gay offered to come and bring in his hand the Duchess of 
Bolton, the original Polly : Steele and Addison left their cards 
as Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de Coverley : Swift came in 
and sat down without speaking a word, and quitted the room 

25 as abruptly : Otway and Chatterton were seen lingering on the 
opposite side of the Styx, but could not muster enough between 
them to pay Charon his fare : Thomson fell asleep in the boat, 
and was rowed back again — and Burns sent a low fellow, one 
John Barleycorn, an old companion of his who had conducted 

30 him to the other world, to say that he had during his lifetime 
been drawn out of his retirement as a show, only to be made an 
exciseman of, and that he would rather remain where he was. 
He desired, however, to shake hands by his representative — the 
hand, thus held out, was in a burning fever, and shook prodigiously. 



PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 225 

The room was hung round with several portraits of eminent 
painters. While we were debating whether we should demand 
speech with these masters of mute eloquence, whose features 
were so familiar to us, it seemed that all at once they glided 
from their frames, and seated themselves at some little distance 5 
from us. There was Leonardo with his majestic beard and 
watchful eye, having a bust of Archimedes before him ; next 
him was Raphael's graceful head turned round to the 
Fornarina ; and on his other side was Lucretia Borgia, with 
calm, golden locks ; Michael Angelo had placed the model of 10 
St. Peter's on the table before him ; Corregio had an angel at 
his side ; Titian was seated with his Mistress between himself 
and Giorgioni ; Guido was accompanied by his own Aurora, 
who took a dice-box from him ; Claude held a mirror in his 
hand ; Rubens patted a beautiful panther (led in by a satyr) on 1 5 
the head ; Vandyke appeared as his own Paris, and Rembrandt 
was hid under furs, gold chains and jewels, which Sir Joshua 
eyed closely, holding his hand so as to shade his forehead. 
Not a word was spoken ; and as we rose to do them homage, 
they still presented the same surface to the view. Not being 20 
bond-fide representations of living people, we got rid of the 
splendid apparitions by signs and dumb show. As soon as 
they had melted into thin air, there was a loud noise at the 
outer door, and we found it was Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghir- 
landaio, who had been raised from the dead by their earnest 25 
desire to see their illustrious successors — 

" Whose names on earth 
In Fame's eternal records live for aye ! " 

Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after 

them, and mournfully withdrew. " Egad ! " said B , " those 30 

are the very fellows I should like to have had some talk with, to 
know how they could see to paint when all was dark around 
them ? " 



226 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

" But shall we have nothing to say," interrogated G. J- 
" to the Legend of Good Women? " — " Name, name, Mr. J— 



cried H in a boisterous tone of friendly exultation, " name 

as many as you please, without reserve or fear of molestation ! " 

5 J was perplexed between so many amiable recollections, 

that the name of the lady of his choice expired in a pensive 

whiff of his pipe ; and B impatiently declared for the 

Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs. Hutchinson was no sooner men- 
tioned, than she carried the day from the Duchess. We were 

10 the less solicitous on this subject of filling up the posthumous 
lists of Good Women, as there was already one in the room as 
good, as sensible, and in all respects as exemplary, as the best 
of them could be for their lives ! "I should like vastly to have 
seen Ninon de I'Enclos," said that incomparable person; and 

IS this immediately put us in mind that we had neglected to pay 
honour due to our friends on the other side of the Channel : 
Voltaire, the patriarch of levity, and Rousseau, the father of senti- 
ment, Montaigne and Rabelais (great in wisdom and in wit), 
Moliere and that illustrious group that are collected round him 

2o (in the print of that subject) to hear him read his comedy 
of the Tartuffe at the house of Ninon ; Racine, La Fontaine, 
Rochefoucault, St. Evremont, &c. 

" There is one person," said a shrill, querulous voice, " I 
would rather see than all these — Don Quixote ! " 

25 " Come, come ! " said H ; " I thought we should have no 

heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. B ? Are you 

for eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, 
Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis Khan ? " " Excuse me," 
said B , " on the subject of characters in active life, 

30 plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my 
own, which I beg leave to reserve." — " No, no! come, out with 
your worthies ! " — " What do you think of Guy Faux and 

Judas Iscariot ? " H turned an eye upon him like a wild 

Indian, but cordial and full of smothered glee. " Your most 



PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 22/ 
exquisite reason ! " was echoed on all sides ; and A 



thought that B had now fairly entangled himself. " Why, 

I cannot but think," retorted he of the wistful countenance, 
" that Guy Faux, that poor fluttering annual scare-crow of 
straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give some- 5 
thing to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his 
matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the 
moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic 
self-devotion ; but if I say any more, there is that fellow 

G will make something of it. — And as to Judas Iscariot, 10 

my reason is different. I would fain see the face of him, who, 
having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, 
could afterwards betray him. I have no conception of such a 
thing ; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's 
very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it." — " You have 15 
said enough, Mr. B -, to justify your choice." 

" Oh ! ever right, Menenius, — ever right ! " 

" There is only one other person I can ever think of after 

this," continued H ; but without mentioning a name that 

once put on a semblance of mortality. " If Shakspeare was to 20 
come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him ; but if 
that person was to come into it, we should all fall down and try 
to kiss the hem of his garment ! " 

As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn the 
conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The morning broke 25 
with that dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cimabue, and 
Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint their earliest works ; and 
we parted to meet again and renew similar topics at night, the 
next night, and the night after that, till that night overspread 
Europe which saw no dawn. The same event, in truth, broke 30 
up our little Congress that broke up the great one. But that 
was to meet again : our deliberations have never been resumed. 



ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY 
IN YOUTH 

" Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us." 

— Sir Thomas Brown. 

No young man believes he shall ever die. It was a saying of 

my brother's, and a fine one. There is a feeling of Eternity in 

youth, which makes us amends for every thing. To be young is 

to be as one of the Immortal Gods. One half of time indeed 

5 is flown — the other half remains in store for us with all its 

countless treasures ; for there is no line drawn, and we see no 

limit to our hopes and wishes. We make the coming age our 

own. — 

" The vast, the unbounded prospect lies before us." 

lo Death, old age, are words without a meaning, that pass by us 
like the idle air which we regard not. Others may have under- 
gone, or may. still be liable to them — we " bear a charmed 
life," which laughs to scorn all such sickly fancies. As in set- 
ting out on a delightful journey, we strain our eager gaze 

15 forward — 

" Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail," — 

and see no end to the landscape, new objects presenting them- 
selves as we advance ; so, in the commencement of life, we set 
no bounds to our inclinations, nor to the unrestricted oppor- 
20 tunities of gratifying them. We have as yet found no obstacle, 
no disposition to flag ; and it seems that we can go on so for 
ever. We look round in a new world, full of life, and motion, 
and ceaseless progress ; and feel in ourselves all the vigour and 
spirit to keep pace with it, and do not foresee from any present 

228 



THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 229 

symptoms how we shall be left behind in the natural course of 
things, decline into old age, and drop into the grave. It is the 
simplicity, and as it were abstractedness of our feelings in youth, 
that (so ta speak) identifies us with nature, and (our experience 
being slight and our passions strong) deludes us into a belief 5 
of being immortal like it. Our short-lived connection with ex- 
istence, we fondly flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and lasting 
union — a honey-moon that knows neither coldness, jar, nor 
separation. As infants smile and sleep, we are rocked in the 
cradle of our wayward fancies, and lulled into security by the 10 
roar of the universe around us — we quaff the cup of life with 
eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only over- 
flows the more — objects press around us, filling the mind with 
their magnitude and with the throng of desires that wait upon 
them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death. 15 
From the plenitude of our being, we cannot change all at once 
to dust and ashes, we cannot imagine " this sensible, warm 
motion, to become a kneaded clod" — we are too much daz- 
zled by the brightness of the waking dream around us to look 
into the darkness of the tomb. We no more see our end than 20 
our beginning : the one is lost in oblivion and vacancy, as the 
other is hid from us by the crowd and hurry of approaching 
events. Or the grim shadow is seen lingering in the horizon, 
which we are doomed never to overtake, or whose last, faint, 
glimmering outline touches upon Heaven and translates us to 25 
the skies ! Nor would the hold that life has taken of us permit 
us to detach our thoughts from the present objects and pur- 
suits, even if we would. What is there more opposed to health, 
than sickness ; to strength and beauty, than decay and disso- 
lution ; to the active search of knowledge than mere oblivion .'' 30 
Or is there none of the usual advantage to bar the approach of 
Death, and mock his idle threats ; Hope supplies their place, 
and draws a veil over the abrupt termination of all our cher- 
ished schemes. While the spirit of youth remains unimpaired, 



230 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

ere the " wine of life is drank up," we are like people intoxi- 
cated or in a fever, who are hurried away by the violence of 
their own sensations : it is only as present objects begin to pall 
upon the sense, as we have been disappointed in our favourite 
5 pursuits, cut off from our closest ties, that passion loosens its 
hold upon the breast, that we by degrees become weaned from 
the world, and allow ourselves to contemplate, " as in a glass, 
darkly," the possibility of parting with it for good. The example 
of others, the voice of experience, has no effect upon us what- 

lo ever. Casualties we must avoid : the slow and deliberate ad- 
vances of age we can play at hide-and-seek with. We think 
ourselves too lusty and too nimble for that blear-eyed decrepid 
old gentleman to catch us. Like the foolish fat scullion, in 
Sterne, when she hears that Master Bobby is dead, our only 

15 reflection is — " So am not I ! " The idea of death, instead of 
staggering our confidence, rather seems to strengthen and 
enhance our possession and our enjoyment of life. Others may 
fall around like leaves, or be mowed down like flowers by the 
scythe of Time : these are but tropes and figures to the unre- 

20 fleeting ears and overweening presumption of youth. It is not 
till we see the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy, withering 
around us, and our own pleasures cut up by the roots, that we 
bring the moral home to ourselves, that we abate something 
of the wanton extravagance of our pretensions, or that the 

25 emptiness and dreariness of the prospect before us reconciles us 

to the stillness of the grave ! 

" Life ! thou strange thing, thou hast a power to feel 
Thou art, and to perceive that others are." 1 

Well might the poet begin his indignant invective against an 
30 art, whose professed object is its destruction, with this animated 
apostrophe to life. Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privi- 
leges are most miraculous. Nor is it singular that when the 
splendid boon is first granted us, our gratitude, our admiration, 

1 Fawcett's Art of War, a poem, 1794. 



THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 23 1 

and our delight should prevent us from reflecting on our own 
nothingness, or from thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first 
and strongest impressions are taken from the mighty scene 
that is opened to us, and we very innocently transfer its dura- 
bility as well as magnificence to ourselves. So newly found, we 5 
cannot make up our minds to parting with it yet and at least 
put off that consideration to an indefinite term. Like a clown at 
a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no 
thoughts of going home, or that it will soon be night. We 
know our existence only from external objects, and we measure 10 
it by them. We can never be satisfied with gazing ; and nature 
will still want us to look on and applaud. Otherwise, the sump- 
tuous entertainment, " the feast of reason and the flow of soul," 
to which they were invited, seems little better than mockery 
and a cruel insult. We do not go from a play till the scene is 15 
ended, and the lights are ready to be extinguished. But the fair 
face of things still shines on ; shall we be called away, before 
the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had a glimpse of what 
is going on ? Like children, our step-mother Nature holds us 
up to see the raree-show of the universe ; and then, as if life 20 
were a burthen to support, lets us instantly down again. Yet in 
that short interval, what " brave sublunary things " does not 
the spectacle unfold ; like a bubble, at one minute reflecting the 
universe, and the next, shook to air! — To see the golden sun 
and the azure sky, the outstretched ocean, to walk upon the 25 
green earth, and to be lord of a thousand creatures, to look 
down the giddy precipices or over the distant flowery vales, to 
see the world spread out under one's finger in a map, to bring 
the stars near, to view the smallest insects in a microscope, to 
read history, and witness the revolutions of empires and the 30 
succession of generations, to hear of the glory of Sidon and 
Tyre, of Babylon and Susa, as of a faded pageant, and to say 
all these were, and are now nothing, to think that we exist in 
such a point of time, and in such a corner of space, to be at 



232 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

once spectators and a part of the moving scene, to watch the 
return of the seasons, of spring and autumn, to hear 

" The stockdove plain amid the forest deep, 

That drowsy rustles to the sighing gale " — 

5 to traverse desert wilderness, to listen to the midnight choir, to 
visit lighted halls, or plunge into the dungeon's gloom, or sit in 
crowded theatres and see life itself mocked, to feel heat and cold, 
pleasure and pain, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, to study 
the works of art and refine the sense of beauty to agony, to 
lo worship fame and to dream of immortality, to have read Shak- 
speare and belong to the same species as Sir Isaac Newton ; ^ to 

1 Lady Wortley Montague says, in one of her letters, that "she would much 
rather be a rich effeudi, with all his ignorance, than Sir Isaac Newton, with all his 
knowledge." This was not perhaps an impolitic choice, as she had a better 
chance of becoming one than the other, there being many rich effendis to one 
Sir Isaac Newton. The wish was not a very intellectual one. The same petu- 
lance of rank and sex breaks out every where in these " Letters." She is con- 
stantly reducing the poets or philosophers who have the misfortune of her 
acquaintance, to the figure they might make at her Ladyship's levee or toilette, 
not considering that the public mind does not sympathize with this process of a 
fastidious imagination. In the same spirit, she declares of Pope and Swift, that 
" had it not been for the good-naiui-c of mankind, these two superior beings were 
entitled, by their birth and hereditary fortune, to be only a couple of link-boys." 
Gulliver's Travels, and the Rape of the Lock, go for nothing in this critical 
estimate, and the world raised the authors to the rank of superior beings, in 
spite of their disadvantages of birth and fortune, out of pure good-nature ! So 
again, she says of Richardson, that he had never got beyond the servant's hall, 
and was utterly unfit to describe the manners of people of quality ; till in the 
capricious workings of her vanity, she persuades herself that Clarissa is very 
like what she was at her age, and that Sir Thomas and Lady Grandison strongly 
resembled what she had heard of her mother and remembered of her father. It 
is one of the beauties and advantages of literature, that it is the means of 
abstracting the mind from the narrowness of local and personal prejudices, and 
of enabling us to judge of truth and excellence by their inherent merits alone. 
Woe be to the pen that would undo this fine illusion (the only reality), and 
teach us to regulate our notions of genius and virtue by the circumstances in 
which they happen to be placed ! You would not expect a person whom you saw 
in a servant's hall, or behind a counter, to write Clarissa ; but after he had 
written the work, to pre-judgc it from the situation of the writer, is an unpar- 
donable piece of injustice and folly. His merit could only be the greater from 
the contrast. If literature is an elegant accomplishment, which none but persons 
of birth and fashion should be allowed to excel in, or to exercise with advantage 
to the public, let them by all means take upon them the task of enlightening and 



THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 233 

be and to do all this, and then in a moment to be nothing, to have 
it all snatched from one like a juggler's ball or a phantasmagoria ; 

refining mankind : if they decline this responsibility as too heavy for their 
shoulders, let those who do the drudgery in their stead, however inadequately, 
for want of their polite example, receive the meed that is their due, and not be 
treated as low pretenders who have encroached upon the provinces of their 
betters. Suppose Richardson to have been acquainted with the great man's 
steward, or valet, instead of the great man himself, I will venture to say that 
there was more difference between him who lived in an ideal world, and had the 
genius and felicity to open that world to others, and his friend the steward, than 
between the lacquey and the mere lord, or between those who lived in differ- 
ent rooms of the same house, who dined on the same luxuries at different tables, 
who rode outside or inside of the same coach, and were proud of wearing or of 
bestowing the same tawdry livery. If the lord is distinguished from his valet 
by any thing else, it is by education and talent, which he has in common with 
the author. But if the latter shews these in the highest degree, it is asked what 
are his pretensions 1 Not birth or fortune, for neither of these would enable 
him to write Clarissa. One man is born with a title and estate, another with genius. 
That is sufficient ; and we have no right to question the genius for want of 
the gentility, unless the former ran in families, or could be bequeathed with a 
fortune, which is not the case. Were it so, the flowers of literature, like jewels 
and embroidery, would be confined to the fashionable circles ; and there would 
be no pretenders to taste or elegance but those whose names were found in 
the court list. No one objects to Claude's Landscapes as the work of a pastry- 
cook, or withholds from Raphael the epithet of divine, because his parents were 
not rich. This impertinence is confined to men of letters ; the evidence of the 
senses baffles the envy and foppery of mankind. No quarter ought to be given 
to this aristocratic tone of criticism whenever it appears. People of quality are 
not contented with carrying all the external advantages for their own share, but 
would persuade you that all the intellectual ones are packed up in the same bundle. 
Lord Byron was a later instance of this double and unwarrantable style of pre- 
tension — monstnan ingens, bifonnc. He could not endure a lord who was not a 
wit, nor a poet who was not a lord. Nobody but himself answered to his own 
standard of perfection. Mr. Moore carries a proxy in his pocket from some noble 
persons to estimate literary merit by the same rule. Lady Mary calls Fielding 
names, but she afterwards makes atonement by doing justice to his frank, free, 
hearty nature, where he says " his spirits gave him raptures with his cook-maid, 
and cheerfulness when he was starving in a garret, and his happy constitution 
made him forget every thing when he was placed before a venison-pasty or over 
a flask of champagne." She does not want shrewdness and spirit when her petu- 
lance and conceit do not get the better of her, and she has done ample and 
merited execution on Lord Bolingbroke. She is, however, very angry at the free- 
doms taken with the Great ; smells a rat in this indiscriminate scribbling, and 
the familiarity of writers with the reading public ; and inspired by her Turkish 
costume, foretells a French and English revolution as the consequence of transfer- 
ring the patronage of letters from the quality to the mob, and of supposing that 
ordinary writers or readers can have any notions in common with their superiors. 



234 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

there is something revolting and incredible to sense in the 
transition, and no wonder that, aided by youth and warm blood, 
and the flush of enthusiasm, the mind contrives for a long 
time to reject it with disdain and loathing as a monstrous and 
5 improbable fiction, like a monkey on a house-top, that is loath, 
amidst its fine discoveries and specious antics, to be tumbled 
headlong into the street, and crushed to atoms, the sport and 
laughter of the multitude ! 

The change, from the commencement to the close of life, 

10 appears like a fable, after it had taken place ; how should we 
treat it otherwise than as a chimera before it has come to pass ? 
There are some things that happened so long ago, places or 
persons we have formerly seen, of which such dim traces re- 
main, we hardly know whether it was sleeping or waking they 

1 5 occurred ; they are like dreams within the dream of life, a mist, 
a film before the eye of memory, which, as we try to recall them 
more distinctly, elude our notice altogether. It is but natural 
that the lone interval that we thus look back upon, should have 
appeared long and endless in prospect. There are others so 

20 distinct and fresh, they seem but of yesterday — their very 
vividness might be deemed a pledge of their permanence. Then, 
however far back our impressions may go, we find others still 
older (for our years are multiplied in youth) ; descriptions of 
scenes that we had read, and people before our time, Priam and 

25 the Trojan war; and even then, Nestor was old and dwelt 
delighted on his youth, and spoke of the race, of heroes that 
were no more ; — what wonder that, seeing this long line of 
being pictured in our minds, and reviving as it were in us, we 
should give ourselves involuntary credit for an indeterminate 

30 existence ? In the Cathedral at Peterborough there is a monu- 
ment to Mary, Queen of Scots, at which I used to gaze when 
a boy, while the events of the period, all that had happened 
since, passed in review before me. If all this mass of feeling 
and imagination could be crowded into a moment's compass. 



THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 235 

what might not the whole of life be supposed to contain ? We 
are heirs of the past; we count on the future as our natural 
reversion. Besides, there are some of our early impressions so 
exquisitely tempered, it appears that they must always last — 
nothing can add to take away from their sweetness and purity 5 

— the first breath of spring, the hyacinth dipped in the dew, 
the mild lustre of the evening-star, the rainbow after a storm 

— while we have the full enjoyment of these, we must be 
young ; and what can ever alter us in this respect ? Truth, 
friendship, love, books, are also proof against the canker of 10 
time ; and while we live, but for them, we can never grow old. 
We take out a new lease of existence from the objects on which 
we set our affections, and become abstracted, impassive, immor- 
tal in them. We cannot conceive how certain sentiments should 
ever decay or grow cold in our breasts; and, consequently, to 15 
maintain them in their first youthful glow and vigour, the flame 

of life must continue to burn as bright as ever, or rather, they 
are the fuel that feed the sacred lamp, that kindle " the purple 
light of love," and spread a golden cloud around our heads ! 
Again, we not only flourish and survive in our affections (in 20 
which we will not listen to the possibility of a change, any more 
than we foresee the wrinkles on the brow of a mistress), but 
we have a farther guarantee against the thoughts of death in 
our favourite studies and pursuits and in their continual advance. 
Art we know is long ; life, we feel, should be so too. We see 25 
no end of the difficulties we have to encounter : perfection is 
slow of attainment, and we must have time to accomplish it in. 
Rubens complained that when he had just learned his art, he 
was snatched away from it : we trust we shall be more fortu- 
nate ! A wrinkle in an old head takes whole days to finish it 30 
properly : but to catch " the Raphael grace, the Guido air," no 
limit should be put to our endeavours. What a prospect for 
the future ! What a task we have entered upon ! and shall we 
be arrested in the middle of it ? We do not reckon our time 



236 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

thus employed lost, or our pains thrown away, or our progress 
slow — we do not droop or grow tired, but " gain a new vigour 
at our endless task;" — and shall Time grudge us the oppor- 
tunity to finish what we have auspiciously begun, and have 
5 formed a sort of compact with nature to achieve ? The fame of 
the great names we look up to is also imperishable ; and shall 
not we, who contemplate it with such intense yearnings, imbibe 
a portion of ethereal fire, the divince particula aiirce, which 
nothing can extinguish ? I remember to have looked at a print 

10 of Rembrandt for hours together, without being conscious of the 
flight of time, trying to resolve it into its component parts, to 
connect its strong and sharp gradations, to learn the secret of 
its reflected lights, and found neither satiety nor pause in the 
prosecution of my studies. The print over which I was poring 

15 would last long enough ; why should the idea in my mind, which 
was finer, more impalpable, perish before it ? At this, I redoubled 
the ardour of my pursuit, and by the very subtlety and refine- 
ment of my inquiries, seemed to bespeak for them an exemption 
from corruption and the rude grasp of Death.^ 

20 Objects, on our first acquaintance with them, have that single- 
ness and integrity of impression that it seems as if nothing could 
destroy or obliterate them, so firmly are they stamped and rivetted 
on the brain. We repose on them with a sort of voluptuous 
indolence, in full faith and boundless confidence. We are ab- 

25 sorbed in the present moment, or return to the same point 
— idling away a great deal of time in youth, thinking we have 
enough to spare. There is often a local feeling in the air, which 
is as fixed as if it were marble ; we loiter in dim cloisters, losing 
ourselves in thought and in their glimmering arches ; a wind- 

30 ing road before us seems as long as the journey of life, and 
as full of events. Time and experience dissipate this illusion ; 
and by reducing them to detail, circumscribe the limits of our 

1 Is it not this that frequently keeps artists alive so long, vh. the constant occu- 
pation of their minds with vivid images, with little of the u'car-aiui-iem- of the body? 



THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 237 

expectations. It is only as the pageant of life passes by and 
the masques turn their backs upon us, that we see through the 
deception, or believe that the train will have an end. In many 
cases, the slow progress and monotonous texture of our lives, 
before we mingle with the world and are embroiled in its affairs, 5 
has a tendency to aid the same feeling. We have a difficulty, 
when left to ourselves, and without the resource of books or 
some more lively pursuit, to " beguile the slow and creeping 
hours of time," and argue that if it moves on always at this 
tedious snail's-pace, it can never come to an end. We are will- 10 
ing to skip over certain portions of it that separate us from 
favourite objects, that irritate ourselves at the unnecessary delay. 
The young are prodigal of life from a superabundance of it ; the 
old are tenacious on the same score, because they have little 
left, and cannot enjoy even what remains of it. 15 

For my part, I set out in life with the French Revolution, 
and that event had considerable influence on my early feelings, 
as on those of others. Youth was then doubly such. It was 
the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been given to men's 
minds, and the sun of Liberty rose upon the sun of Life in the 20 
same day, and both were proud to run their race together. 
Little did I dream, while my first hopes and wishes went hand 
in hand with those of the human race, that long before my eyes 
should close, that dawn would be overcast, and set once more 
in the night of despotism — " total eclipse ! " Happy that I did 25 
not. I felt for years, and during the best part of my existence, 
heart-whole in that cause, and triumphed in the trumphs over 
the enemies of man ! At that time, while the fairest aspirations of 
the human mind seemed about to be realized, ere the image of 
man was defaced and his breast mangled in scorn, philosophy 30 
took a higher, poetry could afford a deeper range. At that time, 
to read the Robbers, was indeed delicious, and to hear 

" From the dungeon of the tower time-rent, 
That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry," 



238 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

could be borne only amidst the fulness of hope, the crash of 
the fall of the strong holds of power, and the exulting sounds 
of the march of human freedom. What feelings the death-scene 
in Don Carlos sent into the soul ! In that headlong career of 
5 lofty enthusiasm, and the joyous opening of the prospects of 
the world and our own, the thought of death crossing it, smote 
doubly cold upon the mind ; there was a stifling sense of oppres- 
sion and confinement, an impatience of our present knowledge, 
a desire to grasp the whole of our existence in one strong 

10 embrace, to sound the mystery of life and death, and in order 
to put an end to the agony of doubt and dread, to burst through 
our prison-house, and confront the King of Terrors in his grisly 
palace ! ... As I was writing out this passage, my miniature- 
picture when a child lay on the mantle-piece, and I took it out 

15 of the case to look at it. I could perceive few traces of myself 
in it ; but there was the same placid brow, the dimpled mouth, 
the same timid, inquisitive glance as ever. But its careless smile 
did not seem to reproach me with having become recreant to 
the sentiments that were then sown in my mind, or with having 

20 written a sentence that could call up a blush in this image of 
ingenuous youth ! 

" That time is past with all its giddy raptures." Since the 
future was barred to my progress, I have turned for consolation 
to the past, gathering up the fragments of my early recollections, 

25 and putting them into form that might live. It is thus, that 

when we find our personal and substantial identity vanishing 

from us, we strive to gain a reflected and substituted one in our 

^ thoughts : we do not like to perish wholly, and wish to bequeath 

our names at least to posterity. As long as we can keep alive our 

30 cherished thoughts and nearest interests in the minds of others, 
we do not appear to have retired altogether from the stage, we 
still occupy a place in the estimation of mankind, exercise a 
powerful influence over them, and it is only our bodies that are 
trampled into dust or dispersed to air. Our darling speculations 



THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 239 

still find favour and encouragement, and we make as good a 
figure in the eyes of our descendants, nay, perhaps, a better 
than we did in our life-time. This is one point gained ; the 
demands of our self-love are so far satisfied. Besides, if by 
the proofs of intellectual superiority we survive ourselves in 5 
this world, by exemplary virtue or unblemished faith, we are 
taught to ensure an interest in another and a higher state of 
being, and to anticipate at the same time the applauses of men 
and angels. 

" Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries ; 10 

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires." 

As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value 
of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence ; and 
we become misers in this respect. We try to arrest its few last 
tottering steps, and to make it linger on the brink of the grave. 15 
We can never leave off wondering how that which has ever been 
should cease to be, and would still live on, that we may wonder 
at our own shadow, and when " all the life of life is flown," 
dwell on the retrospect of the past. This is accompanied by a 
mechanical tenaciousness of whatever we possess, by a distrust 20 
and a sense of fallacious hollowness in all we see. Instead of 
the full, pulpy feeling of youth, every thing is flat and insipid. 
The world is a painted witch, that puts us off with false shews 
and tempting appearances. The ease, the jocund gaiety, the 
unsuspecting security of youth are fled : nor can we, without 25 
flying in the face of common sense, 

" From the last dregs of hfe, hope to receive 
What its first sprightly runnings could not give." 

If we can slip out of the world without notice or mischance, 
can tamper with bodily infirmity, and frame our minds to the 30 
becoming composure of still-life, before we sink into total insen- 
sibility, it is as much as we ought to expect. We do not in the 
regular course of nature die all at once : we have mouldered 



240 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

away gradually long before ; faculty after faculty, attachment 
after attachment, we are torn from ourselves piece-meal while 
living ; year after year takes something from us ; and death 
only consigns the last remnant of what we were to the grave. 
5 The revulsion is not so great, and a quiet euthanasia is a 
winding-up of the plot, that is not out of reason or nature. 
That we should thus in a manner outlive ourselves, and 
dwindle imperceptibly into nothing, is not surprising, when even 
in our prime the strongest impressions leave so little traces of 

lo themselves behind, and the last object is driven out by the suc- 
ceeding one. How little effect is produced on us at any time 
by the books we have read, the scenes we have witnessed, the 
sufferings we have gone through ! Think only of the variety 
of feelings we experience in reading an interesting romance, or 

15 being present at a fine play — what beauty, what sublimity, 
what soothing, what heart-rending emotions ! You would sup- 
pose these would last for ever, or at least subdue the mind to 
a correspondent tone and harmony — while we turn over the 
page, while the scene is passing before us, it seems as if nothing 

-o could ever after shake our resolution, that " treason domestic, 
foreign levy, nothing could touch us farther ! " The first splash 
of mud we get, on entering the street, the first pettifogging shop- 
keeper that cheats us out of two-pence, and the whole vanishes 
clean out of our remembrance, and we become the idle prey 

25 of the most petty and annoying circumstances. The mind soars 
by an effort to the grand and lofty : it is at home, in the grov- 
elling, the disagreeable, and the little. This happens in the height 
and hey-day of our existence, when novelty gives a stronger im- 
pulse to the blood and takes a faster hold of the brain, (I have 

30 known the impression on coming out of a gallery of pictures 
then last half a day) — as we grow old, we become more feeble 
and querulous, every object " reverbs its own hollowness," and 
both worlds are not enough to satisfy the peevish importunity 
and extravagant presumption of our desires ! There are a few 



THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 241 

superior, happy beings, who are born with a temper exempt 
from every trifling annoyance. This spirit sits serene and smiling 
as in its native skies, and a divine harmony (whether heard or 
not) plays around them. This is to be at peace. Without this, 
it is in vain to fly into deserts, or to build a hermitage on the 5 
top of rocks, if regret and ill-humour follow us there : and with 
this, it is needless to make the experiment. The only true re- 
tirement is that of the heart ; the only true leisure is the repose 
of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference 
whether they are young or old ; and they die as they have 10 
lived, with graceful resignation. 



ON READING NEW BOOKS 

" And what of this new book, that the whole world make such a rout 
about ? " — Sterne. 

I cannot understand the rage manifested by the greater part 
of the world for reading New Books. If the public had read 
all those that have gone before, I can conceive how they should 
not wish to read the same work twice over; but when I con- 
5 sider the countless volumes that lie unopened, unregarded, 
unread, and unthought-of, I cannot enter into the pathetic com- 
plaints that I hear made, that Sir Walter writes no more — that 
the press is idle — that Lord Byron is dead. If I have not read 
a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, 

lo whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago. 
If it be urged that it has no modern, passing incidents, and is 
out of date and old-fashioned, then it is so much the newer : it 
is farther removed from other works that I have lately read, 
from the familiar routine of ordinary life, and makes so much 

15 more addition to my knowledge. But many people would as 
soon think of putting on old armour, as of taking up a book 
not published within the last month, or year at the utmost. 
There is a fashion in reading as well as in dress, which lasts 
only for the season. One would imagine that books were, like 

20 women, the worse for being old ; ^ that they have a pleasure in 
being read for the first time ; that they open their leaves more 
cordially ; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the spirit 
of novelty ; and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put 
them on the shelf. This conceit seems to be followed up in 

1 " Laws are not like women, the worse for being old." — The Duke of Buck- 
inghatn's Speech in the House of Lords, in Charles the Second'' s time. 

242 



ON READING NEW BOOKS 243 

practice. What is it to me that another — that hundreds or 
thousands have in all ages read a work ? Is it on this account 
the less likely to give me pleasure, because it has delighted so 
many others ? Or can I taste this pleasure by proxy ? Or am 
I in any degree the wiser for their knowledge ? Yet this might 5 
appear to be the inference. Their having read the work may 
be said to act upon us by sympathy, and the knowledge which 
so many other persons have of its contents deadens our curiosity 
and interest altogether. We set aside the subject as one on 
which others have made up their minds for us (as if we really 10 
could have ideas in their heads), and are quite on the alert for 
the next new work, teeming hot from the press, which we shall 
be the first to read, criticise, and pass an opinion on. Oh, 
delightful ! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of 
the scarcely dry paper, to examine the type, to see who is the 15 
printer (which is some clue to the value that is set upon the 
work), to launch out into regions of thought and invention 
never trod till now, and to explore characters that never met a 
human eye before — this is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner- 
party, or a few hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, 20 
when the work is critical and full of expectation, would venture 
to dine out, or to face a coterie of blue stockings in the even- 
ing, without having gone through this ordeal, or at least without 
hastily turning over a few of the first pages, while dressing, to 
be able to say that the beginning does not promise much, or 25 
to tell the name of the heroine ? 

A new work is something in our power : we mount the bench, 
and sit in judgment on it ; we can damn or recommend it to 
others at pleasure, can decry or extol it to the skies, and can 
give an answer to those who have not yet read it and expect an 30 
account of it ; and thus shew our shrewdness and the inde- 
pendence of our taste before the world have had time to form 
an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by 
busying ourselves about it, a kind of accessaries after the fact. 



244 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Though not the parent of the bantling that " has just come into 
this breathing world, scarce half made up," without the aid of 
criticism and puffing, yet we are the gossips and foster-nurses 
on the occasion, with all the mysterious significance and self- 
5 importance of the tribe. If we wait, we must take our report 
from others ; if we make haste, we may dictate our's to them. 
It is not a race, then, for priority of information, but for 
precedence in tattling and dogmatising. The work last out 
is the first that people talk and inquire about. It is the sub- 

lo ject on the tapis — the cause that is pending. It is the last 
candidate for success (other claims have been disposed of), 
and appeals for this success to us, and us alone. Our pred- 
ecessors can have nothing to say to this question, however 
they may have anticipated us on others ; future ages, in all 

15 probability, will not trouble their heads about it; we are the 
panel. How hard, then, not to avail ourselves of our immediate 
privilege to give sentence of life or death — to seem in ignorance 
of what every one else is full of — to be behind- hand with the 
polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of mankind — to be at 

20 a loss and dumb-founded, when all around us are in their 
glory, and figuring away, on no other ground than that of 
having read a work that we have not ! Books that are to be 
written hereafter cannot be criticised by us ; those that were 
written formerly have been criticised long ago : but a new book 

25 is the property, the prey of ephemeral criticism, which it darts 
triumphantly upon ; there is a raw thin air of ignorance and 
uncertainty about it, not filled up by any recorded opinion; 
and curiosity, impertinence, and vanity rush eagerly into the 
vacuum. A new book is the fair field for petulance and cox- 

30 combry to gather laurels in — the but set up for removing 
opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then, that the circulating 
libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and their grand- 
daughters, when a new novel is announced .-' That Mail-Coach 
copies of the Edmburgh Revietv are or were coveted ,-' That 



ON READING NEW BOOKS 245 

the Manuscript of the Waverley romances is sent abroad in 
time for the French, German, or even Italian translation to 
appear on the same day as the original work, so that the 
longing Continental public may not be kept waiting an instant 
longer than their fellow-readers in the English metropolis, 5 
which would be as tantalising and insupportable as a little girl 
being kept without her new frock, when her sister's is just come 
home and is the talk and admiration of every one in the house ? 
To be sure, there is something in the taste of the times ; a 
modern work is expressly adapted to modern readers. It 10 
appeals to our direct experience, and to well-known subjects ; 
it is part and parcel of the world around us, and is drawn from 
the same sources as our daily thoughts. There is, therefore, 
so far, a natural or habitual sympathy between us and the 
literature of the day, though this is a different consideration 15 
from the mere circumstance of novelty. An author now alive 
has a right to calculate upon the living public : he cannot count 
upon the dead, nor look forward with much confidence to those 
that are unborn. Neither, however, is it true that we are eager 
to read all new books alike : we turn from them with a certain 20 
feeling of distaste and distrust, unless they are recommended 
to us by some peculiar feature or obvious distinction. Only 
young ladies from the boarding-school, or milliners' girls, 
read all the new novels that come out. It must be spoken of 
or against ; the writer's name must be well known or a great 25 
secret ; it must be a topic of discourse and a mark for criticism 

— that is, it must be likely to bring us into notice in some way 

— or we take no notice of it. There is a mutual and tacit 
understanding on this head. We can no more read all the new 
books that appear, than we can read all the old ones that have 30 
disappeared from time to time. A question may be started 
here, and pursued as far as needful, whether, if an old and 
worm-eaten Manuscript were discovered at the present moment, 

it would be sought after with the same avidity as a new and 



246 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

hot-pressed poem, or other popular work ? Not generally, 
certainly, though by a few with perhaps greater zeal. For it 
would not affect present interests, or amuse present fancies, or 
touch on present manners, or fall in with the public egotism in 
5 any way: it would be the work either of some obscure author- 
in which case it would want the principle of excitement ; or of 
some illustrious name, whose style and manner would be 
already familiar to those most versed in the subject, and his 
fame established — so that, as a matter of comment and con- 

10 troversy, it would only go to account on the old score : there 
would be no room for learned feuds and heart-burnings. Was 
there not a Manuscript of Cicero's talked of as having been 
discovered about a year ago ? But we have heard no more of 
it. There have been several other cases, more or less in point, 

15 in our time or near it. A Noble Lord (which may serve to 
shew at least the interest taken in books not for being neiv) 
some time ago gave ;^2ooo for a copy of the first edition of the 
Decameron : but did he read it ? It has been a fashion also of 
late for noble and wealthy persons to go to a considerable 

20 expense in ordering reprints of the old Chronicles and black- 
letter works. Does not this rather prove that the books did 
not circulate very rapidly or extensively, or such extraordinary 
patronage and liberality would not have been necessary ? Mr. 
Thomas Taylor, at the instance, I believe, of the old Duke of 

25 Norfolk, printed fifty copies in quarto of a translation of the 
works of Plato and Aristotle. He did not choose that a larger 
impression should be struck off, lest these authors should 
get into the hands of the vulgar. There was no danger of 
a run in that way. I tried to read some of the Dialogues 

30 in the translation of Plato, but, I confess, could make 
nothing of it : " the logic was so different from ours ! " ^ A 

1 An expression borrowed from a voluble German scholar, who gave this as an 
excuse for not translating the Critique of Pure Reason into English. He might as 
well have said seriously, that the Rule of Three in German was different from 



ON READING NEW BOOKS 247 

startling experiment was made on this sort of retrospective 
curiosity, in the case of Ireland's celebrated Shakspeare for- 
gery. The public there certainly manifested no backwardness 
nor lukewarmness : the enthusiasm was equal to the folly. 
But then the spirit exhibited on this occasion was partly 5 
critical and polemical, and it is a problem whether an actual 
and undoubted play of Shakspeare's would have excited the 
same ferment ; and, on the other hand, Shakspeare is an 
essential modern. People read and go to see his real plays, 
as well as his pretended ones. The fuss made about Ossian 10 
is another test to refer to. It was its being the supposed 
revival of an old work (known only by scattered fragments 
or lingering tradition) which gave it its chief interest, though 
there was also a good deal of mystery and quackery concerned 

our's. Mr. Taylor (the Platonist, as he was called) was a singular instance of a 
person in our time believing in the heathen mythology. He had a very beautiful 
wife. An impudent Frenchman, who came over to London, and lodged in the 
same house, made love to her, by pretending to worship her as Venus, and so 
thought to turn the tables on our philosopher. I once spent an evening with this 
gentleman at Mr. G. D.'s chambers, in Cliffords-inn, (where there was no ex- 
clusion of persons or opinions), and where we had pipes and tobacco, porter, and 
bread and cheese for supper. Mr. Taylor never smoked, never drank porter, and 
had an aversion to cheese. I remember he shewed with some triumph two of his 
fingers, which had been bent so that he had lost the use of them, in copying out 
the manuscripts of Proclus and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand. Such are the tro- 
phies of human pride ! It would be well if our deep studies often produced no 
other crookedness and deformity ! I endeavoured (but in vain) to learn some- 
thing from the heathen philosopher as to Plato's doctrine of abstract ideas being 
the foundation of particular ones, which 1 suspect has more truth in it than we 
moderns are willing to admit. Another friend of mine once breakfasted with 
Mr. D. (the most amiable and absent of hosts), when there was no butter, no 
knife to cut the loaf with, and the tea-pot was without a spout. My friend, after 
a few immaterial ceremonies, adjourned to Peel's coffee-house, close by, where 
he regaled himself on buttered toast, coffee, and the newspaper of the day (a 
newspaper possessed some interest when we were young) ; and the only inter- 
ruption to his satisfaction was the fear that his host might suddenly enter, and be 
shocked at his imperfect hospitality. He would probably forget the circumstance 
altogether. I am afraid that this veteran of the old school has not received many 
proofs of the archaism of the prevailing taste ; and that the corrections in his 
History of the University of Cambridge have cost him more than the public 
will ever repay him for. 



248 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

along with the din and stir of national jealousy and pretension. 
Who reads Ossian now ? It is one of the reproaches brought 
against Buonaparte that he was fond of it when young. I 
cannot for myself see the objection. There is no doubt an 
5 antiquarian spirit always at work, and opposed to the spirit of 
novelty-hunting ; but, though opposed, it is scarcely a match 
for it in a general and popular point of view. It is not long 
ago that I happened to be suggesting a new translation of 
Don Quixote to an enterprising bookseller ; and his answer 

10 was, — " We want new Don Quixotes." I believe I deprived 
the same active-minded person of a night's rest, by telling 
him there was the beginning of another novel by Goldsmith 
in existence. This, if it could be procured, would satisfy both 
tastes for the new and the old at once. I fear it is but a 

1 5 fragment, and that we must wait till a new Goldsmith appears. 
We may observe of late a strong craving after Memoirs and 
Lives of the Dead. But these, it may be remarked, savour so 
much of the real and familiar, that the persons described differ 
from us only in being dead, which is a reflection to our advan- 

20 tage : or, if remote and romantic in their interest and adventures, 
they require to be bolstered up in some measure by the embellish- 
ments of modern style and criticism. The accounts of Petrarch 
and Laura, of Abelard and Eloise, have a lusciousness and 
warmth in the subject which contrast quaintly and pointedly 

25 with the coldness of the grave ; and, after all, we prefer Pope's 
Eloise and Abelard with the modern dress and flourishes, to the 
sublime and affecting simplicity of the original Letters. 

In some very just and agreeable reflections on the story of 
Abelard and Eloise, in a late number of a contemporary publi- 

30 cation, there is a quotation of some lines from Lucan, which 
Eloise is said to have repeated in broken accents as she was 
advancing to the altar to receive the veil : 

" O maxime conjux ! 
O thalamis indigne meis ! Hoc juris habebat 



ON READING NEW BOOKS 249 

In tantum fortuna caput ? Cur impia nupsi, 
Si miserum factura fui ? Nunc accipe pasnas, 
Sed quas sponte luam." — Pharsalia, lib. 8. 

This speech, quoted by another person, on such an occasion, 
might seem cold and pedantic ; but from the mouth of the pas- 5 
sionate and unaffected Eloise it cannot bear that interpretation. 
What sounding lines ! What a pomp, and yet what a familiar 
boldness in their application — " proud as when blue Iris bends ! " 
The reading this account brought forcibly to mind what has 
struck me often before — ■ the unreasonableness of the complaint 10 
we constantly hear of the ignorance and barbarism of former 
ages, and the folly of restricting all refinement and literary ele- 
gance to our own. We are, indeed, indebted to the ages that 
have gone before us, and could not well do without them. But 
in all ages there will be found still others that have gone before 1 5 
with nearly equal lustre and advantage, though by distance and 
the intervention of multiplied excellence, this lustre may be 
dimmed or forgotten. Had it then no existence ? We might, 
with the same reason, suppose that the horizon is the last bound- 
ary and verge of the round earth. Still, as we advance, it 20 
recedes from us ; and so time from its store-house pours out 
an endless succession of the productions of art and genius ; and 
the farther we explore the obscurity, other trophies and other 
land-marks rise up. It is only our ignorance that fixes a limit 
— as the mist gathered round the mountain's brow makes us 25 
fancy we are treading the edge of the universe ! Here was 
Heloise living at a period when monkish indolence and super- 
stition were at their height — • in one of those that are emphati- 
cally called the dark ages ; and yet, as she is led to the altar to 
make her last fatal vow, expressing her feelings in language 30 
quite natural to her, but from which the most accomplished and 
heroic of our modem females would shrink back with pretty 
and affected wonder and affright. The glowing and impetuous 
lines which she murmured, as she passed on, with spontaneous 



250 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and rising enthusiasm, were engraven on her heart, familiar to 
her as her daily thoughts ; her mind must have been full of 
them to overflowing, and at the same time enriched with other 
stores and sources of knowledge equally elegant and impressive ; 
5 and we persist, notwithstanding this and a thousand similar cir- 
cumstances, in indulging our surprise how people could exist, 
and see, and feel, in those days, without having access to our 
opportunities and acquirements, and how Shakespeare wrote 
long after, m a barbarous age ! The mystery in this case is of 

lo our own making. We are struck with astonishment at finding 
a fine moral sentiment or a noble image nervously expressed in 
an author of the age of Queen Elizabeth ; not considering that, 
independently of nature and feeling, which are the same in all 
periods, the writers of that day, who were generally men of 

15 education and learning, had such models before them as the 
one that has been just referred to — were thoroughly acquainted 
with those masters of classic thought and language, compared 
with whom, in all that relates to the artificial graces of compo- 
sition, the most studied of the moderns are little better than 

20 Goths and Vandals. It is true, we have lost sight of, and neg- 
lected the former, because the latter have, in a great degree, 
superseded them, as the elevations nearest to us intercept those 
farthest off; but our not availing ourselves of this vantage- 
ground is no reason why our forefathers should not (who had 

25 not our superfluity of choice), and most assuredly they did 
study and cherish the precious fragments of antiquity, collected 
together in their time, " like sunken wreck and sumless treas- 
uries ; " and while they did this, we need be at no loss to account 
for any examples of grace, of force, or dignity in their writings, 

30 if these must always be traced back to a previous source. One 
age cannot understand how another could subsist without its 
lights, as one country thinks every other must be poor for want 
of its physical productions. This is a narrow and superficial 
view of the subject : we should by all means rise above it. 



ON READING NEW BOOKS 25 I 

I am not for devoting the whole of our time to the study of 
the classics, or of any other set of writers, to the exclusion and 
neglect of nature ; but I think we should turn our thoughts 
enough that way to convince us of the existence of genius and 
learning before our time, and to cure us of an overweening con- 5 
ceit of ourselves, and of a contemptuous opinion of the world 
at large. Every civilised age and country (and of these there is 
not one, but a hundred) has its literature, its arts, its comforts, 
large and ample, though we may know nothing of them ; nor is 
it (except for our own sakes) important that we should. 10 

Books have been so multiplied in our days (like the Vanity 
Fair of knowledge), and we have made such progress beyond 
ourselves in some points, that it seems at first glance as if we 
had monopolised every possible advantage, and the rest of the 
world must be left destitute and in darkness. This is the cock- 15 
neyism (with leave be it spoken) of the nineteenth century. There 
is a tone of smartness and piquancy in modern writing, to which 
former examples may, in one sense, appear flat and pedantic. 
Our allusions are more pointed and personal : the ancients are, 
in this respect, formal and prosaic personages. Some one, not 20 
long ago, in this vulgar, shallow spirit of criticism (which sees 
every thing from its own point of view), said that the tragedies 
of Sophocles and ^schylus were about as good as the pieces 
brought out at Sadler's Wells or the Adelphi Theatre. An ora- 
tion of Demosthenes is thought dry and meagre, because it is 25 
not " full of wise saws and modern instances : " one of Cicero's 
is objected to as flimsy and extravagant, for the same reason. 
There is a style in one age which does not fall in with the taste 
of the public in another, as it requires greater effeminacy and 
softness, greater severity or simplicity, greater force or refine- 30 
ment. Guido was more admired than Raphael in his day, because 
the manners were grown softer without the strength : Sir Peter 
Lely was thought in his to have eclipsed Vandyke — an opinion 
that no one holds at present : Holbein's faces must be allowed 



252 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

to be very different from Sir Thomas Lawrence's — yet the one 
was the favourite painter of Henry A^III., as the other is of 
George IV. What should we say in our time to the euphuism 
of the age of Elizabeth, when style was made a riddle, and the 
5 court talked in conundrums ? This, as a novelty and a trial of 
the wits, might take for a while : afterwards, it could only seem 
absurd. We must always make some allowance for a change of 
style, which those who are accustomed to read none but works 
written within the last twenty years neither can nor will make. 

lo When a whole generation read, they will read none but contem- 
porary productions. The taste for literature becomes superficial, 
as it becomes universal and is spread over a larger space. When 
ten thousand boarding-school girls, who have learned to play on 
the harpsichord, are brought out in the same season, Rossini 

15 will be preferred to Mozart, as the last new composer. I re- 
member a very genteel young couple in the boxes of Drury Lane 
being very much scandalised some years ago at the phrase in 
A New Way to Pay Old Debts — " an insolent piece of paper" 
— applied to the contents of a letter- — it wanted the modern 

20 lightness and indifference. Let an old book be ever so good, it 
treats (generally speaking) of topics that are stale, in a style that 
has grown " somewhat musty ; " of manners that are exploded, 
probably by the very ridicule thus cast upon them ; of persons 
that no longer figure on the stage ; and of interests that have 

25 long since given place to others in the infinite fluctuations of 
human affairs. Longinus complains of the want of interest in 
the Odyssey, because it does not, like the Iliad, treat of war. 
The very complaint we make against the latter is that it treats 
of nothing else ; or that, as Fuseli expresses it, every thing is seen 

30 " through the blaze of war." Books of devotion are no longer 
read (if we read Irving's Orations, it is merely that we may go 
as a lounge to see the man) : even attacks on religion are out of 
date and insipid. Voltaire's jests and the Jew's Letters in answer 
(equal in wit, and more than equal in learning), repose quietly 



ON READING NEW BOOKS 253 

on the shelf together. We want something in England about 
Rent and the Poor-Laws, and something in France about the 
Charter — or Lord Byron. With the attempts, however, to 
revive superstition and intolerance, a spirit of opposition has 
been excited, and Pascal's Provincial Letters have been once 5 
more enlisted into the service. In France you meet with no one 
who has read the New Heloise : the Princess of Cleves is not even 
mentioned in these degenerate days. Is it not provoking with 
us to see the Beggars'' Opera cut down to two acts, because some 
of the allusions are too broad, and others not understood ? And 10 
in America — that Van Diemen's Land of letters — this sterling 
satire is hooted off the stage, because, fortunately, they have no 
such state of matters as it describes before their eyes ; and be- 
cause, unfortunately, they have no conception of any thing but 
what they see. America is singularly and awkwardly situated in 1 5 
this respect. It is a new country with an old language ; and 
while every thing about them is of a day's growth, they are con- 
stantly applying to us to know what to think of it, and taking 
their opinions from our books and newspapers with a strange 
mixture of servility and of the spirit of contradiction. They are 20 
an independent state in politics : in literature they are still a 
colony from us — not out of their leading strings, and strangely 
puzzled how to determine between the Edinburgh and Quarterly 
Reviews. We have naturalised some of their writers, who had 
formed themselves upon us. This is at once a compliment to 25 
them and to ourselves. Amidst the scramble and lottery for 
fame in the present day, besides puffing, which may be regarded 
as the hot-bed of reputation, another mode has been attempted 
by transplanting it ; and writers who are set down as drivellers 
at home, shoot up great authors on the other side of the water ; 30 
pack up their all — a title-page and sufficient impudence ; and a 
work, of which the flocci-nauci-nihilipili-Jication, in Shenstone's 
phrase, is well known to every competent judge, is placarded 
into eminence, and " flames in the forehead of the morning sky " 



254 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

on the walls of Paris or St. Petersburgh. I dare not mention 
the instances, but so it is. Some reputations last only while the 
possessors live, from which one might suppose that they gave 
themselves a character for genius : others are cried up by their 
5 gossiping acquaintances, as long as they give dinners, and make 
their houses places of polite resort ; and, in general, in our time, 
a book may be considered to have passed the ordeal that is 
mentioned at all three months after it is printed. Immortality 
is not even a dream — a boy's conceit ; and posthumous fame 

10 is no more regarded by the author than by his bookseller.-^ 

This idle, dissipated turn seems to be a set-off to, or the 
obvious reaction of, the exclusive admiration of the ancients, 
which was formerly the fashion : as if the sun of human intel- 
lect rose and set at Rome and Athens, and the mind of man 

1 5 had never exerted itself to any purpose since. The ignorant, as 
well as the adept, were charmed only with what was obsolete 
and far-fetched, wrapped up in technical terms and in a learned 
tongue. Those who spoke and wrote a language which hardly 
any one at present even understood, must of course be wiser 

20 than we. Time, that brings so many reputations to decay, had 
embalmed others and rendered them sacred. From an implicit 
faith and overstrained homage paid to antiquity, we of the 
modern school have taken too strong a bias to what is new ; 
and divide all wisdom and worth between ourselves and poster- 

25 ity, — not a very formidable rival to our self-love, as we attrib- 
ute all its advantages to ourselves, though we pretend to owe 
little or nothing to our predecessors. About the time of the 
French Revolution, it was agreed that the world had hitherto 
been in its dotage or its infancy ; and that Mr. Godwin, Con- 

30 dorcet, and others were to begin a new race of men — a new 

1 When a certain poet was asked if he thought Lord Byron's name would Hve 
three years after he was dead, he answered, " Not three days, Sir ! " This was 
premature : it has lasted above a year. His works have been translated into French, 
and there is a Caffe Byron on the Boulevards. Think of a Caffe \Vords%vorth on 
the Boulevards ! 



ON READING NEW BOOKS 255 

epoch in society. Every thing up to that period was to be set 
aside as puerile or barbarous ; or, if there were any traces of 
thought and manliness now and then discoverable, they were to 
be regarded with wonder as prodigies — as irregular and fitful 
starts in that long sleep of reason and night of philosophy. In 5 
this liberal spirit Mr. Godwin composed an Essay to prove that, 
till the publication of The E?iqinry concerning Political Justice, 
no one knew how to write a word of common grammar, or a 
style that was not utterly uncouth, incongruous, and feeble. 
Addison, Swift, and Junius were included in this censure. The 10 
English language itself might be supposed to owe its stability 
and consistency, its roundness and polish, to the whirling motion 
of the French Revolution. Those who had gone before us were, 
like our grandfathers and grandmothers, decrepit, superannuated 
people, blind and dull ; poor creatures, like flies in winter, with- 15 
out pith or marrow in them. The past was barren of interest 
— had neither thought nor object worthy to arrest our atten- 
tion ; and the future would be equally a senseless void, except 
as we projected ourselves and our theories into it. There is 
nothing I hate more than I do this exclusive, upstart spirit. 20 

" By Heavens, I'd rather be 
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
So might I, standing on some pleasant lea, 
Catch glimpses that might make me less forlorn. 
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, 25 

Or hear Old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

Wordsworth's Sonnets 

Neither do I see the good of it even in a personal and interested 
point of view. By despising all that has preceded us, we teach 
others to despise ourselves. Where there is no established scale 
nor rooted faith in excellence, all superiority — our own as well 30 
as that of others — soon comes to the ground. By applying the 
wrong end of the magnifying-glass to all objects indiscriminately, 
the most respectable dwindle into insignificance, and the best 



256 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

are confounded with the worst. Learning, no longer supported 
by opinion, or genius by fame, is cast into the mire, and " trampled 
under the hoofs of a swinish multitude." I would rather endure 
the most blind and bigoted respect for great and illustrious 
5 names, than that pitiful, grovelling humour which has no pride 
in intellectual excellence, and no pleasure but in decrying those 
who have given proofs of it, and reducing them to its own level. 
If, with the diffusion of knowledge, we do not gain an enlarge- 
ment and elevation of views, where is the benefit ? If, by tear- 

10 ing asunder names from things, we do not leave even the name 
or shadow of excellence, it is better to let them remain as they 
were ; for it is better to have something to admire than nothing 
— names, if not things — the shadow, if not the substance — 
the tinsel, if not the gold. All can now read and write equally ; 

15 and, it is therefore presumed, equally well. Any thing short of 
this sweeping conclusion is an invidious distinction ; and those 
who claim it for themselves or others are exdusionists in letters. 
Every one at least can call names — can invent a falsehood, or 
repeat a story against those who have galled their pragmatical 

20 pretensions by really adding to the stock of general amusement 
or instruction. Every one in a crowd has the power to throw 
dirt ; nine out of ten have the inclination. It is curious that, 
in an age when the most universally-admitted claim to public 
distinction is literary merit, the attaining this distinction is almost 

25 a sure tide to public contempt and obloquy.^ They cry you up, 
because you are unknown, and do not excite their jealousy ; and 
run you down, when they have thus distinguished you, out of 
envy and spleen at the veiy idol they have set up. A public 
favourite is "kept like an apple in the jaw of an ape — first 

30 mouthed, to be afterwards swallowed. When they need what 
you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, spunge, you 
shall be dry again." At first they think only of the pleasure or 

1 Is not this partly owing to the disappointment of the public at finding any 
defect in their idol ? 



ON READING NEW BOOKS 257 

advantage they receive : but, on reflection, they are mortified at 
the superiority implied in this involuntary concession, and are 
determined to be even with you the very first opportunity. 
What is the prevailing spirit of modern literature ? To defame 
men of letters. What are the publications that succeed ? Those 5 
that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been 
accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth 
are no better than themselves, or a set of vagabonds or miscreants 
that should be hunted out of society.^ Hence men of letters, 
losing their self-respect, become government-tools, and prosti- lo 
tute their talents to the most infamous purposes, or turn dandy 
saihblers, and set up for gentlemen authors in their own defence. 
I like the Order of the Jesuits better than this : they made 
themselves respected by the laity, kept their own secret, and 
did not prey on one another. Resume then, oh ! Learning, thy 1 5 
robe pontifical ; clothe thyself in pride and purple ; join the 
sacred to the profane ; wield both worlds ; instead of twopenny 
trash and mechanics' magazines, issue bulls and decretals ; say 
not, let there be light, but darkness visible ; draw a bandage 

1 An old friend of mine, when he read the abuse and billingsgate poured out 
in certain Tory publications, used to congratulate himself upon it as a favourable 
sign of the times, and of the progressive improvement of our manners. Where 
we now called names, we formerly burnt each other at a stake : and all the 
malice of the heart flew to the tongue and vented itself in scolding, instead 
of crusades and auto-da-fes — the nobler revenge of our ancestors for a difference 
of opinion. An author now libels a prince ; and, if he takes the law of him or 
throws him into gaol, it is looked upon as a harsh and ungentlemanly proceed- 
ing. He, therefore, gets a dirty Secretary to employ a dirty bookseller, to hire a 
set of dirty scribblers to pelt him with dirt and cover him with blackguard epi- 
thets — till he is hardly in a condition to walk the streets. This is hard measure, 
no doubt, and base ingratitude on the part of the public, according to the imag- 
inary dignity and natural precedence which authors take of kings ; but the latter 
are men, and will have their revenge where they can get it. They have no longer 
their old summary appeal — their will may still be good — to the dungeon and 
the dagger. Those who "speak evil of dignities" may, therefore, think themselves 
well off in being merely sent to Coventry : and, besides, if they have //lui they 
can make a Parthian retreat, and shoot poisoned arrows behind them. The good 
people of Florence lift up their hands when they are shewn the caricatures in the 
Queen's Matrimonial-Ladder, and ask if they are really a likeness of the King ? 



258 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

over the eyes of the ignorant and unlettered ; hang the terrors 
of superstition and despotism over them ; — and for thy pains 
they will bless thee : children will pull off their caps as thou 
dost pass ; women will courtesy ; the old will wipe their beards ; 
and thou wilt rule once more over the base serving people, 
clowns, and nobles, with a rod of iron ! 



ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 

Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are dis- 
agreeable to others. I do not here mean to speak of persons 
who offend intentionally, or are obnoxious to dislike from some 
palpable defect of mind or body, ugliness, pride, ill-humour, 
&c., — but of those who are disagreeable in spite of them- 5 
selves, and, as it might appear, with almost every qualification 
to recommend them to others. This want of success is owing 
chiefly to something in what is called their manner; and this 
again has its foundation in a certain cross-grained and unsocia- 
ble state of feeling on their part, which influences us, perhaps, 10 
without our distinctly adverting to it. The mind is a finer in- 
strument than we sometimes suppose it, and is not only swayed 
by overt acts and tangible proofs, but has an instinctive feeling 
of the air of truth. We find many individuals in whose com- 
pany we pass our time, and have no particular fault to find 15 
with their understandings or character, and yet we are never 
thoroughly satisfied with them : the reason will turn out to be, 
upon examination, that they are never thoroughly satisfied with 
themselves, but uneasy and out of sorts all the time ; and this 
makes us uneasy with them, without our reflecting on, or being 20 
able to discover the cause. 

Thus, for instance, we meet with persons who do us a 
number of kindnesses, who shew us every mark of respect and 
good-will, who are friendly and serviceable, — and yet we do 
not feel grateful to them, after all. We reproach ourselves with 25 
this as caprice or insensibility, and try to get the better of 
it ; but there is something in their way of doing things that 
prevents us from feeling cordial or sincerely obliged to them. 

259 



26o SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

We think them very worthy people, and would be glad of an 
opportunity to do them a good turn if it were in our power ; 
but we cannot get beyond this : the utmost we can do is to save 
appearances, and not come to an open rupture with them. 
5 The truth is, in all such cases, we do not sympathise (as we 
ought) with them, because they do not sympathise (as they 
ought) with us. They have done what they did from a sense of 
duty in a cold dry manner, or from a meddlesome busybody 
humour ; or to shew their superiority over us, or to patronise 

lo our infirmity ; or they have dropped some hint by the way, or 
blundered upon some topic they should not, and have shewn, 
by one means or other, that they were occupied with any thing 
but the pleasure they were affording us, or a delicate attention 
to our feelings. Such persons may be sty\&dfnendly grievances. 

15 They are commonly people of low spirits and disappointed 
views, who see the discouraging side of human life, and, with 
the best intentions in the world, contrive to make every thing 
they have to do with uncomfortable. They are alive to your 
distress, and take pains to remove it ; but they have no satis- 

20 faction in the gaiety and ease they have communicated, and are 
on the look-out for some new occasion of signalizing their zeal ; 
nor are they backward to insinuate that you will soon have 
need of their assistance, to guard you against running into fresh 
difficulties, or to extricate you from them. From large benevo- 

25 lence of soul and " discourse of reason, looking before and 
after," they are continually reminding you of something that has 
gone wrong in time past, or that may do so in that which is to 
come, and are surprised that their awkward hints, sly inuendos, 
blunt questions, and solemn features do not excite all the 

30 complacency and mutual good understanding in you which 
it is intended that they should. When they make themselves 
miserable on your account, it is hard that you will not lend 
them your countenance and support. This deplorable humour 
of theirs does not hit any one else. They are useful, but not 



ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 261 

agreeable people ; they may assist you in your affairs, but they 
depress and tyrannise over your feelings. When they have 
made you happy, they will not let you be so — have no enjoy- 
ment of the good they have done — -will on no account part 
with their melancholy and desponding tone — and, by their 5 
mawkish insensibility and doleful grimaces, throw a damp 
over the triumph they are called upon to celebrate. They 
would keep you in hot water, that they may help you out 
of it. They will nurse you in a fit of sickness (congenial suf- 
ferers ! ) — arbitrate a law-suit for you, and embroil you deeper 10 
— procure you a loan of money ; — but all the while they are 
only delighted with rubbing the sore place, and casting the 
colour of your mental or other disorders. " The whole need 
not a physician ; " and, being once placed at ease and comfort, 
they have no farther use for you as subjects for their singular 15 
beneficence, and you are not sorry to be quit of their tiresome 
interference. The old proverb, A friend in need is a friend 
indeed, is not verified in them. The class of persons here spoken 
of are the very reverse of summerfriends, who court you in pros- 
perity, flatter your vanity, are the humble servants of your follies, 20 
never see or allude to any thing wrong, minister to your gaiety, 
smooth over every difficulty, and, with the slightest approach of 
misfortune or of any thing unpleasant, take French leave : — 

"As when, in prime of June, a burnished fly, 
Sprung from the meads, o'er which he sweeps along, 25 

Cheered by the breathing bloom and vital sky, 
Tunes up amid these airy halls his song, 
Soothing at first the gay reposing throng ; 
And oft he sips their bowl, or nearly drowned, 
He thence recovering drives their beds among, 30 

And scares their tender sleep with trump profound ; 
Then out again he flies to wing his mazy round." 

Thomson's Castle of Indolence 

However we may despise such triflers, yet we regret them more 
than those well-meaning friends on whom a dull melancholy 



262 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

vapour hangs, that drags them and every one about them to 
the ground. 

Again, there are those who might be very agreeable people, 
if they had but spirit to be so ; but there is a narrow, unaspiring, 
5 under-bred tone in all they say or do. They have great sense 
and information — abound in a knowledge of character — have 
a fund of anecdote — are unexceptionable in manners and 
appearance — and yet we cannot make up our minds to like 
them : we are not glad to see them, nor sorry when they go 

lo away. Our familiarity with them, however great, wants the 
principle of cement, which is a certain appearance of frank cor- 
diality and social enjoyment. They have no pleasure in the 
subjects of their own thoughts, and therefore can communicate 
none to others. There is a dry, husky, grating manner — a petti- 

1 5 ness of detail — a tenaciousness of particulars, however trifling 
or unpleasant — a disposition to cavil — • an aversion to enlarged 
and liberal views of things — in short, a hard, painful, unbending 
matter-of-factness, from which the spirit and effect are banished, 
and the letter only is attended to, which makes it impossible to 

2o sympathise with their discourse. To make conversation inter- 
esting or agreeable, there is required either the habitual tone of 
good company, which gives a favourable colouring to every 
thing — or the warmth and enthusiasm of genius, which, though 
it may occasionally offend or be thrown off its guard, makes 

25 amends by its rapturous flights, and flings a glancing light upon 
all things. The literal and dogged style of conversation resem- 
bles that of a French picture, or its mechanical fidelity is like 
evidence given in a court of justice, or a police report. 

From the literal to the plain-spoken, the transition is easy. 

30 The most efficient weapon of offence is truth. Those who deal 
in dry and repulsive matters-of-fact, tire out their friends ; those 
who blurt out hard and home truths, make themselves mortal 
enemies wherever they come. There are your blunt, honest 
creatures, who omit no opportunity of ietting you know their 



ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 263 

minds, and are sure to tell you all the ill, and conceal all the 
good they hear of you. They would not flatter you for the 
world, and to caution you against the malice of others, they 
think the province of a friend. This is not candour, but im- 
pudence ; and yet they think it odd you are not charmed with 5 
their unreserved communicativeness of disposition. Gossips and 
tale-bearers, on the contrary, who supply the tittle-tattle of the 
neighbourhood, flatter you to your face, and laugh at you behind 
your back, are welcome and agreeable guests in all companies. 
Though you know it will be your turn next, yet for the sake of 10 
the immediate gratification, you are contented to pay your share 
of the public tax upon character, and are better pleased with the 
falsehoods that never reach your ears, than with the truths that 
others (less complaisant and more sincere) utter to your face — 
so short-sighted and willing to be imposed upon is our self-love ! 1 5 
There is a man, who has the air of not being convinced without 
an argument : you avoid him as if he were a lion in your path. 
There is another, who asks you fifty questions as to the com- 
monest things you advance : you would sooner pardon a fellow 
who held a pistol to your breast and demanded your money. 20 
No one regards a turnpike-keeper, or a custom-house officer, 
with a friendly eye : he who stops you in an excursion of fancy, 
or ransacks the articles of your belief obstinately and churlishly, 
to distinguish the spurious from the genuine, is still more your 
foe. These inquisitors and cross-examiners upon system make 25 
ten enemies for every controversy in which they engage. The 
world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors. 
In doing them this piece of service, you make war equally on 
their prejudices, their interests, their pride, and indolence. You 
not only set up for a superiority of understanding over them, 30 
which they hate, but you deprive them of their ordinary grounds 
of action, their topics of discourse, of their confidence in them- 
selves, and those to whom they have been accustomed to look 
up for instruction and 'advice. It is making children of them. 



264 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

You unhinge all their established opinions and trains of thought ; 
and after leaving them in this listless, vacant, unsettled state — 
dissatisfied with their own notions and shocked at yours — you 
expect them to court and be delighted with your company, be- 
5 cause, forsooth, you have only expressed your sincere and consci- 
entious convictions. Mankind are not deceived by professions, 
unless they choose. They think that this pill of true doctrine, 
however it may be gilded over, is full of gall and bitterness to 
them ; and, again, it is a maxim of which the vulgar are firmly 

10 persuaded, that plain-speaking (as it is called) is, nine parts 
in ten, spleen and self-opinion ; and the other part, perhaps, 
honesty. Those who will not abate an inch in argument, and 
are always seeking to recover the wind of you, are, in the eye 
of the world, disagreeable, unconscionable people, who ought to 

15 be soit to Coventry, or left to wrangle by themselves. No per- 
sons, however, are more averse to contradiction than these same 
dogmatists. What shews our susceptibility on this point is, that 
there is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent. 
Any one, however mean his capacity or ill-qualified to judge, 

20 who gives way to all our sentiments, and never seems to think 
but as we do, is indeed an alter idem — another self ; and we 
admit him without scruple into our entire confidence, " yea, into 
our heart of hearts." 

It is the same in books. Those which, under the disguise of 

25 plain-speaking, vent paradoxes, and set their faces against the 
common-sense of mankind, are neither " the volumes 

"that enrich the shops, 

That pass with approbation through the land ; " 

nor, I fear, can it be added — 
30 " That bring their authors an immortal fame." 

They excite a clamour and opposition at first, and are in general 
soon consigned to oblivion. Even if the opinions are in the end 
adopted, the authors gain little by it, and their names remain in 



ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 265 

their original obloquy ; for the public will own no obligations to 
such ungracious benefactors. In like manner, there are many 
books written in a very delightful vein, though with little in 
them, and that are accordingly popular. Their principle is to 
please, and not to offend ; and they succeed in both objects. 5 
We are contented with the deference shown to our feelings for 
the time, and grant a truce both to wit and wisdom. The 
" courteous reader " and the good-natured author are well 
matched in this instance, and find their account in mutual tender- 
ness and forbearance to each other's infirmities. I am not sure 10 
that Walton's Angler is not a book of this last description — 

" That dallies with the innocence of thought, 
Like the old age." 

Hobbes and Mandeville are in the opposite extreme, and have 
met with a correspondent fate. The Tatler and Spectator are i s 
in the golden mean, carry instruction as far as it can go without 
shocking, and give the most exquisite pleasure without one 
particle of pain. " Desire to please^ and you will infallibly please^^ 
is a maxim equally applicable to the study or the drawing-room. 
Thus also we see actors of very small pretensions, and who 20 
have scarce any other merit than that of being on good terms 
with themselves, and in high good humour with their parts 
(though they hardly understand a word of them), who are uni- 
versal favourites with the audience. Others, who are masters of 
their art, and in whom no slip or flaw can be detected, you have 25 
no pleasure in seeing, from something dry, repulsive, and uncon- 
ciliating in their manner ; and you almost hate the very mention 
of their names, as an unavailing appeal to your candid decision 
in their favour, and as taxing you with injustice for refusing it. 

We may observe persons who seem to take a peculiar delight 30 
in the disagreeable. They catch all sorts of uncouth tones and 
gestures, the manners and dialect of clowns and hoydens, and 
aim at vulgarity as desperately as others ape gentility. [This is 



266 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

what is often understood by a love of lo7v life.'\ They say the 
most unwarrantable things, without meaning or feeling what 
they say. What startles or shocks other people, is to them a 
sport — an amusing excitement — a fillip to their constitutions ; 
5 and from the bluntness of their perceptions, and a certain wil- 
fulness of spirit, not being able to enter into the refined and 
agreeable, they make a merit of despising every thing of the 
kind. Masculine women, for example, are those who, not being 
distinguished by the charms and delicacy of the sex, affect a 

lo superiority over it by throwing aside all decorum. We also find 
another class, who continually do and say what they ought not, 
and what they do not intend, and who are governed almost en- 
tirely by an instinct of absurdity. Owing to a perversity of 
imagination or irritability of nerve, the idea that a thing is im- 

1 5 proper acts as a provocation to it : the fear of committing a 
blunder is so strong, that in their agitation they bolt out what- 
ever is uppermost in their minds, before they are aware of the 
consequence. The dread of something wrong haunts and rivets 
their attention to it ; and an uneasy, morbid apprehensiveness 

2o of temper takes away their self-possession, and hurries them 
into the very mistakes they are most anxious to avoid. 

If we look about us, and ask who are the agreeable and 
disagreeable people in the world, we shall see that it does not 
depend on their virtues or vices — their understanding or stu- 

25 pidity — but as much on the degree of pleasure or pain they 
seem to feel in ordinary social intercourse. What signify all the 
good qualities any one possesses, if he is none the better for 
them himself ? If the cause is so delightful, the effect ought to 
be so too. We enjoy a friend's society only in proportion as he 

30 is satisfied with ours. Even wit, however it may startle, is only 
agreeable as it is sheathed in good-humour. There are a kind 
of intellectual stammerers^ who are delivered of their good things 
with pain and effort ; and consequently what costs them such 
evident uneasiness does not impart unmixed delight to the 



ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 26/ 

bystanders. There are those, on the contrary, whose sallies 
cost them nothing — who abound in a flow of pleasantry and 
good-humour ; and who float down the stream with them care- 
lessly and triumphantly, — 

" Wit at the helm, and Pleasure at the prow." 5 

Perhaps it may be said of English wit in general, that it too 
much resembles pointed lead : after all, there is something 
heavy and dull in it ! The race of small wits are not the least 
agreeable people in the world. They have their little joke to 
themselves, enjoy it, and do not set up any preposterous pre- 10 
tensions to thwart the current of our self-love. Toad-eating is 
accounted a thriving profession ; and a butt^ according to the 
Spectator, is a highly useful member of society — as one who 
takes whatever is said of him in good part, and as necessary to 
conduct off the spleen and superfluous petulance of the company. 1 5 
Opposed to these are the swaggering bullies — the licensed wits 
— the free-thinkers — the loud talkers, who, in the jockey phrase, 
have lost their months, and cannot be reined in by any regard to 
decency or common-sense. The more obnoxious the subject, the 
more are they charmed with it, converting their want of feeling 20 
into a proof of superiority to vulgar prejudice and squeamish 
affectation. But there is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as 
well as of the body. There are some objects that shock the 
sense, and cannot with propriety be mentioned : there are naked 
truths that offend the mind, and ought to be kept out of sight as 25 
much as possible. For human nature cannot bear to be too hardly 
pressed upon. One of these cynical truisms, when brought for- 
ward to the world, may be forgiven as a slip of the pen : a succes- 
sion of them, denoting a deliberate purpose and fnalice prepe?ise, 
must ruin any writer. Lord Byron had got into an irregular 30 
course of these a little before his death — seemed desirous, in 
imitation of Mr. Shelley, to run the gauntlet of public obloquy 
— and, at the same time, wishing to screen himself from the 



268 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

censure he defied, dedicated his Cain to Sir Walter Scott — a 
pretty godfather to such a bantling ! 

Some persons are of so teazing and fidgetty a turn of mind, 
that they do not give you a moment's rest. Every thing goes 
5 wrong with them. They complain of a headache or the weather. 
They take up a book, and lay it down again — venture an 
opinion, and retract it before they have half done — offer to 
serve you, and prevent some one else from doing it. If you 
dine with them at a tavern, in order to be more at your ease, 

10 the fish is too little done — the sauce is not the right one ; they 
ask for a sort of wine which they think is not to be had, or if it 
is, after some trouble, procured, do not touch it ; they give the 
waiter fifty - contradictory orders, and are restless and sit on 
thorns the whole of dinner-time. All this is owing to a want of 

1 5 robust health, and of a strong spirit of enjoyment ; it is a fastid- 
ious habit of mind, produced by a valetudinary habit of body : 
they are out of sorts with every thing, and of course their ill- 
humour and captiousness communicates itself to you, who are 
as little delighted with them as they are with other things. 

2o Another sort of people, equally objectionable with this helpless 
class, who are disconcerted by a shower of rain or stopped by 
an insect's wing, are those who, in the opposite spirit, will have 
every thing their own way, and carry all before them — who can- 
not brook the slightest shadow of opposition — who are always 

25 in the heat of an argument — who knit their brows and clench 
their teeth in some speculative discussion, as if they were engaged 
in a personal quarrel — ■ and who, though successful over almost 
every competitor, seem still to resent the very offer of resist- 
ance to their supposed authority, and are as angry as if they had 

30 sustained some premeditated injury. There is an impatience 
of temper and an intolerance of opinion in this that conciliates 
neither our affection nor esteem. To such persons nothing ap- 
pears of any moment but the indulgence of a domineering intel- 
lectual superiority to the disregard and discomfiture of their own 



ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 269 

and every body else's comfort. Mounted on an abstract proposi- 
tion, they trample on every courtesy and decency of behaviour ; 
and though, perhaps, they do not intend the gross personalities 
they are guilty of, yet they cannot be acquitted of a want of due 
consideration for others, and of an intolerable egotism in the 5 
support of truth and justice. You may hear one of these Quix- 
otic declaimers pleading the cause of humanity in a voice of 
thunder, or expatiating on the beauty of a Guido with features 
distorted with rage and scorn. This is not a very amiable or 
edifying spectacle. 10 

There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they ? 
Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understand- 
ing or good-nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you 
complain of : on the contrary, they have probably many points 
of attraction ; but they have one that neutralises all these — they 15 
care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for 
what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach ; 
and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do 
just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, 
nor absence of mind ; but they are intent solely on their own 20 
thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise 
them upon. They live in society as in a solitude ; and, however 
their brain works, their pulse beats neither faster nor slower for 
the common accidents of life. There is, therefore, something 
cold and repulsive in the air that is about them — like that of 25 
marble. In a word, they are modern philosophers ; and the 
modern philosopher is what the pedant was of old^ — a being 
who lives in a world of his own, and has no correspondence with 
this. It is not that such persons have not done you services — 
you acknowledge it ; it is not that they have said severe things 30 
of you — you submit to it as a necessary evil : but it is the cool 
manner in which the whole is done that annoys you — the spec- 
ulating upon you, as if you were nobody — the regarding you, 
with a view to an experiment in corpore vili — the principle of 



270 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

dissection — the determination to spare no blemishes — to cut 
you down to your real standard ; — in short, the utter absence 
of the partiality of friendship, the blind enthusiasm of affection, 
or the delicacy of common decency, that whether they " hew 

5 you as a carcase fit for hounds, or carve you as a dish fit for 
the gods," the operation on your feelings and your sense of obli- 
gation is just the same ; and, whether they are demons or angels 
in themselves, you wish them equally at the devil ! 

Other persons of worth and sense give way to mere violence 

lo of temperament (with which the understanding has nothing to- 
do) — are burnt up with a perpetual fury — repel and throw 
you to a distance by their restless, whirling motion — so that 
you dare not go near them, or feel as uneasy in their company 
as if you stood on the edge of a volcano. They have their tem- 

iS pora 7nollia fandi ; but then what a stir may you not expect the 
next moment ! Nothing is less inviting or less comfortable than 
this state of uncertainty and apprehension. Then there are those 
who never approach you without the most alarming advice or 
information, telling you that you are in a dying way, or that your 

20 affairs are on the point of ruin, by way of disburthening their 
consciences ; and others, who give you to understand much the 
same thing as a good joke, out of sheer impertinence, constitu- 
tional vivacity, and want of something to say. All these, it must 
be confessed, are disagreeable people ; and you repay their over- 

25 anxiety or total forgetfulness of you, by a determination to cut 
them as speedily as possible. We meet with instances of persons 
who overpower you by a sort of boisterous mirth and rude 
animal spirits, with whose ordinary state of excitement it is as 
impossible to keep up as with that of any one really intoxicated ; 

30 and with others who seem scarce alive — who take no pleasure 

or interest in any thing — who are bom to exemplify the maxim, 

" Not to admire is all the art I know 
To make men happy, or to keep them so," — • 

and whose mawkish insensibility or sullen scorn are equally 



ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 27 1 

annoying. In general, all people brought up in remote country- 
places, where life is crude and harsh — all sectaries — all par- 
tisans of a losing cause, are discontented and disagreeable. 
Commend me above all to the Westminster School of Reform, 
whose blood runs as cold in their veins as the torpedo's, and 5 
whose touch jars like it. Catholics are, upon the whole, more 
amiable than Protestants — foreigners than English people. 
Among ourselves, the Scotch, as a nation, are particularly dis- 
agreeable. They hate every appearance of comfort themselves, 
and refuse it to others. Their climate, their religion, and their 10 
habits are equally averse to pleasure. Their manners are either 
distinguished by a fawning sycophancy (to gain their own ends, 
and conceal their natural defects), that makes one sick ; or by 
a morose unbending callousness, that makes one shudder. I had 
forgot to mention two other descriptions of persons who fall under 1 5 
the scope of this essay : — those who take up a subject and run 
on with it interminably, without knowing whether their hearers 
care one word about it, or in the least minding what reception 
their oratory meets with — these are pretty generally voted bores 
(mostly German ones) ; — and others, who may be designated as 20 
practical paradox-mongers — who discard the " milk of human 
kindness," and an attention to common observances, from all 
their actions, as effeminate and puling — who wear a white hat 
as a mark of superior understanding, and carry home a handker- 
chief-full of mushrooms in the top of it as an original discovery 25 
— • who give you craw-fish for supper instead of lobsters ; seek 
their company in a garret, and over a gin-bottle, to avoid the impu- 
tation of affecting genteel society ; and discard them after a term 
of years, and warn others against them, as being honest fellows^ 
which is thought a vulgar prejudice. This is carrying the harsh 30 
and repulsive even beyond the disagreeable — to the hateful. Such 
persons are generally people of common-place understandings, 
obtuse feelings, and inordinate vanity. They are formidable if they 
get you in their power — otherwise, they are only to be laughed at. 



272 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

There are a vast number who are disagreeable from meanness 
of spirit, downright insolence, from slovenliness of dress or dis- 
gusting tricks, from folly or ignorance : but these causes are 
positive moral or physical defects, and I only meant to speak of 
5 that repulsiveness of manners which arises from want of tact 
and sympathy with others. So far of friendship : a word, if I 
durst, of love. Gallantry to women (the sure road to their 
favour) is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion 
to all their wants and wishes — a delight in their satisfaction, 

lo and a confidence in yourself, as being able to contribute towards 
it. The slightest indifference with regard to them, or distrust of 
yourself, are equally fatal. The amiable is the voluptuous in 
looks, manner, or words. No face that exhibits this kind of 
expression — whether lively or serious, obvious or suppressed, 

1 5 will be thought ugly — no address, awkward — no lover who 
approaches every woman he meets as his mistress, will be 
unsuccessful. Dififidence and awkwardness are the two anti- 
dotes to love. 

To please universally, we must be pleased with ourselves and 

2o others. There should be a tinge of the coxcomb, an oil of self- 
complacency, an anticipation of success — there should be no 
gloom, no moroseness, no shyness — in short, there should be 
very litde of an Englishman, and a good deal of a Frenchman. 
But though, I believe, this is the receipt, we are none the nearer 

25 making use of it. It is impossible for those who are naturally 
disagreeable ever to become otherwise. This is some consola- 
tion, as it may save a world of useless pains and anxiety. 
" Desire to please^ and you will infallibly please''' is a true 
maxim ; but it does not follow that it is in the power of all 

30 to practise it. A vain man, who thinks he is endeavouring to 
please, is only endeavouring to shine, and is still farther from 
the mark. An irritable man, who puts a check upon himself, 
only grows dull, and loses spirit to be anything. Good temper 
and a happy spirit (which are the indispensable requisites) can 



ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 273 

no more be commanded than good health or good looks ; and 
though the plain and sickly need not distort their features, and 
may abstain from excess, this is all they can do. The utmost a 
disagreeable person can do is to hope to be less disagreeable than 
with care and study he might become, and to pass unnoticed 5 
in society. With this negative character he should be contented, 
and may build his fame and happiness on other things. 

I will conclude with a character of men who neither please 
nor aspire to please anybody, and who can come in nowhere so 
properly as at the fag-end of an essay : — I mean that class of 10 
discontented but amusing persons, who are infatuated with their 
own ill success, and reduced to despair by a lucky turn in their 
favour. While all goes well, they are like fish out of water. 
They have no reliance on or sympathy with their good fortune, 
and look upon it as a momentary delusion. Let a doubt be 15 
thrown on the question, and they begin to be full of lively 
apprehensions again : let all their hopes vanish, and they feel 
themselves on firm ground once more. From want of spirit or 
of habit, their imaginations cannot rise above the low ground of 
humility — cannot reflect the gay, flaunting tints of the fancy — 20 
flag and droop into despondency — and can neither indulge the 
expectation, nor employ the means of success. Even when it is 
within their reach, they dare not lay hands upon it ; and shrink 
from unlooked-for bursts of prosperity, as something of which 
they are both ashamed and unworthy. The class of croakers 25 
here spoken of are less delighted at other people's misfortunes 
than their own. Their neighbours may have some pretensions 
— they have none. Querulous complaints and anticipations of 
pleasure are the food on which they live ; and they at last ac- 
quire a passion for that which is the favourite theme of their 30 
thoughts, and can no more do without it than without the pinch 
of snuff with which they season their conversation, and enliven 
the pauses of their daily prognostics. 



ON A SUN-DIAL 

" To carve out dials quaintly, point by point." — Shakespeare. 

Ho7-as non numero nisi serenas — is the motto of a sun-dial 
near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words 
and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the 
5 most classical. " I count only the hours that are serene." What 
a bland and care-dispelling feeling ! How the shadows seem to 
fade on the dial-plate as the sky lours, and time presents only a 
blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all 
that is not happy sinks into oblivion ! What a fine lesson is con- 

lo yeyed to the mind — to take no note of time but by its benefits, 
to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to 
compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always 
to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our 
imaginations, unheeded or forgotten ! How different from the 

15 common art of self-tormenting ! For myself, as I rode along 
the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy 
waves, my sensations were far from comfortable ; but the read- 
ing this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant 
restored me to myself ; and still, whenever I think of or repeat 

20 it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and 
blissful abstraction. I cannot help fancying it to be a legend of 
Popish superstition. Some monk of the dark ages must have 
invented and bequeathed it to us, who, loitering in trim gardens 
and watching the silent march of time, as his fruits ripened in 

25 the sun or his flowers scented the balmy air, felt a mild languor 
pervade his senses, and having little to do or to care for, deter- 
mined (in imitation of his sun-dial) to efface that little from his 

274 



ON A SUN-DIAL 2/5 

thoughts or draw a veil over it, making of his life one long 
dream of quiet ! Horas non numero nisi serenas — • he might 
repeat, when the heavens were overcast and the gathering storm 
scattered the falling leaves, and turn to his books and wrap him- 
self in his golden studies ! Out of some such mood of mind, 5 
indolent, elegant, thoughtful, this exquisite device (speaking 
volumes) must have originated. 

Of the several modes of counting time, that by the sun-dial 
is perhaps the most apposite and striking, if not the most con- 
venient or comprehensive. It does not obtrude its observations, 10 
though it " morals on the time," and, by its stationary character, 
forms a contrast to the most fleeting of all essences. It stands 
sub dio — under the marble air, and there is some connexion 
between the image of infinity and eternity. I should also like to 
have a sunflower growing near it with bees fluttering round. ^ It 15 
should be of iron to denote duration, and have a dull, leaden look. 
I hate a sun-dial made of wood, which is rather calculated to 
show the variations of the seasons, than the progress of time, 
slow, silent, imperceptible, chequered with light and shade. If 
our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as 20 
little note of them, as the dial does of those that are clouded. 
It is the shadow thrown across, that gives us warning of their 
flight. Otherwise, our impressions would take the same undis- 
tinguishable hue ; we should scarce be conscious of our exist- 
ence. Those who have had none of the cares of this life to 25 
harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to 
the hopes and fears of the next to enliven the prospect before 
them. Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time 
have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious 
recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were 30 
at some pains to see how they got rid of it. The hour-glass 
is, I suspect, an older invention ; and it is certainly the most 

1 Is this a verbal fallacy ? Or in the close, retired, sheltered scene which I have 
imagined to myself, is not the sun-flower a natural accompaniment of the sun-dial ? 



276 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

defective of all. Its creeping sands are not indeed an unapt 
emblem of the minute, countless portions of our existence ; 
and the manner in which they gradually slide through the hol- 
low glass and diminish in number till not a single one is left, 
5 also illustrates the way in which our years slip from us by 
stealth : but as a mechanical invention, it is rather a hindrance 
than a help, for it requires to have the time, of which it pre- 
tends to count the precious moments, taken up in attention to 
itself, and in seeing that when one end of the glass is empty, 

lo we turn it round, in order that it may go on again, or else all 
our labour is lost, and we must wait ior some other mode 
of ascertaining the time before we can recover our reckoning 
and proceed as before. The philosopher in his cell, the cottager 
at her spinning-wheel must, however, find an invaluable acqui- 

15 sition in this "companion of the lonely hour," as it has been 
called,^ which not only serves to tell how the time goes, but to 
fill up its vacancies. What a treasure must not the little box 
seem to hold, as if it were a sacred deposit of the very grains 
and fleeting sands of life ! What a business, in lieu of other 

20 more important avocations, to see it out to the last sand, and 
then to renew the process again on the instant, that there may 
not be the least flaw or error in the account ! What a strong 
sense must be brought home to the mind of the value and irre- 
coverable nature of the time that is fled ; what a thrilling, inces- 

25 sant consciousness of the slippery tenure by which we hold 
what remains of it ! Our very existence must seem crumbling 
to atoms, and running down (without a miraculous reprieve) 
to the last fragment. " Dust to dust and ashes to ashes " is a 
text that might be fairly inscribed on an hour-glass: it is ordi- 

30 narily associated with the scythe of Time and a Death's-head, 
as a Mcmejito mori ; and has, no doubt, furnished many a tacit 

1 " Once more, companion of the lonely hour, 
I'll turn thee up again." 

Blooinficld'' s Poems — The Widow to her How-glass 



ON A SUN-DIAL 277 

hint to the apprehensive and visionary enthusiast in favour 
of a resurrection to another life ! 

The French give a different turn to things, less sombre and 
less edifying. A common and also a very pleasing ornament to 
a clock, in Paris, is a figure of Time seated in a boat which 5 
Cupid is rowing along, with the motto, L' Amour fait passer le 
Tems — which the wits again have travestied into Le Tems fait 
passer L Amour. All this is ingenious and well ; but it wants 
sentiment. I like a people who have something that they love 
and something that they hate, and with whom every thing is not 10 
alike a matter of indifference ox pour passer le tems. The French 
attach no importance to any thing, except for the moment ; they 
are only thinking how they shall get rid of one sensation for 
another ; all their ideas are in transitu. Every thing is detached, 
nothing is accumulated. It would be a million of years before 15 
a Frenchman would think of the Horas no?i mwiero nisi serenas. 
Its impassioned repose and ideal voluptuousness are as far from 
their breasts as the poetry of that line in Shakspeare — " How 
sweet the moonlight sleeps upon that bank ! " They never arrive 
at the classical — or the romantic. They blow the bubbles of 20 
vanity, fashion, and pleasure ; but they do not expand their per- 
ceptions into refinement, or strengthen them into solidity. Where 
there is nothing fine in the ground-work of the imagination, 
nothing fine in the superstructure can be produced. They are 
light, airy, fanciful (to give them their due) — but when they 25 
attempt to be serious (beyond mere good sense) they are either 
dull or extravagant. When the volatile salt has flown off, nothing 
but a eaput mortuum remains. They have infinite crotchets and 
caprices with their clocks and watches, which seem made for 
any thing but to tell the hour — gold-repeaters, watches with 30 
metal covers, clocks with hands to count the seconds. There is no 
escaping from quackery and impertinence, even in our attempts 
to calculate the waste of time. The years gallop fast enough for 
me, without remarking every moment as it flies ; and farther, 



2/8 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

I must say I dislike a watch (whether of French or English 
manufacture) that comes to me like a footpad with its face 
muffled, and does not present its clear, open aspect like a 
friend, and point with its finger to the time of day. All this 
5 opening and shutting of dull, heavy cases (under pretence that 
the glass-lid is liable to be broken, or lets in the dust or air and 
obstructs the movement of the watch), is not to husband time, 
but to give trouble. It is mere pomposity and self-importance, 
like consulting a mysterious oracle that one carries about with 

lo one in one's pocket, instead of asking a common question of an 
acquaintance or companion. There are two clocks which strike 
the hour in the room where I am. This I do not like. In the 
first place, I do not want to be reminded twice how the time 
goes (it is like the second tap of a saucy servant at your door 

15 when perhaps you have no wish to get up): in the next place, 
it is starting a difference of opinion on the subject, and I am 
averse to every appearance of wrangling and disputation. Time 
moves on the same, whatever disparity there may be in our 
mode of keeping count of it, like true fame in spite of the 

20 cavils and contradictions of the critics. I am no friend to re- 
peating watches. The only pleasant association I have with 
them is the account given by Rousseau of some French lady, 
who sat up reading the New Heloise when it first came out, and 
ordering her maid to sound the repeater, found it was too late 

25 to go to bed, and continued reading on till morning. Yet how 
different is the interest excited by this story from the account 
which Rousseau somewhere else gives of his sitting up with his 
father reading romances, when a boy, till they were startled by 
the swallows twittering in their nests at day-break, and the father 

30 cried out, half angry and ashamed — "AHofis, moii Jils ; je siiis 
plus e7ifant que toil " In general, I have heard repeating watches 
sounded in stage-coaches at night, when some fellow-traveller 
suddenly awaking and wondering what was the hour, another 
has very deliberately taken out his watch, and pressing the 



ON A SUN-DIAL 279 

spring, it has counted out the time ; each petty stroke acting 
like a sharp puncture on the ear, and informing me of the 
dreary hours I had already passed, and of the more dreary 
ones I had to wait till morning. 

The great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over 5 
watches and other dumb reckoners of time is, that for the 
most part they strike the hour — that they are as it were the 
mouth-pieces of time ; that they not only point it to the eye, 
but impress it on the ear ; that they " lend it both an under- 
standing and a tongue." Time thus speaks to us in an audible 10 
and warning voice. Objects of sight are easily distinguished by 
the sense, and suggest useful reflections to the mind ; sounds, 
from their intermittent nature, and perhaps other causes, appeal 
more to the imagination, and strike upon the heart. But to do 
this, they must be unexpected and involuntary — there must be 1 5 
no trick in the case — they should not be squeezed out with a 
finger and a thumb ; there should be nothing optional, personal 
in their occurrence ; they should be like stem, inflexible monitors, 
that nothing can prevent from discharging their duty. Surely, 
if there is any thing with which we should not mix up our vanity 20 
and self-confidence, it is with Time, the most independent of all 
things. All the sublimity, all the superstition that hang upon this 
palpable mode of announcing its flight, are chiefly attached to 
this circumstance. Time would lose its abstracted character, 
if we kept it like a curiosity or a jack-in-a-box : its prophetic 25 
warnings would have no effect, if it obviously spoke only at our 
prompting, like a paltry ventriloquism. The clock that tells the 
coming, dreaded hour — the castle bell, that " with its brazen 
throat and iron tongue, sounds one unto the drowsy ear of 
night " — the curfew, " swinging slow with sullen roar " o'er 30 
wizard stream or fountain, are like a voice from other worlds, 
big with unknown events. The last sound, which is still kept 
up as an old custom in many parts of England, is a great 
favourite with me. I used to hear it when a boy. It tells a 



28o . SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

tale of other times. The days that are past, the generations 
that are gone, the tangled forest glades and hamlets brown of 
my native country, the woodsman's art, the Norman warrior 
armed for the battle or in his festive hall, the conqueror's iron 
5 rule and peasant's lamp extinguished, all start up at the clam- 
orous peal, and fill my mind with fear and wonder. I confess, 
nothing at present interests me but what has been — the recol- 
lection of the impressions of my early life, or events long past, 
of which only the dim traces remain in a smouldering ruin or 

10 half-obsolete custom. That t/ii?igs should be that are now no inore, 
creates in my mind the most unfeigned astonishment. I cannot 
solve the mysteiy of the past, nor exhaust my pleasure in it. 
The years, the generations to come, are nothing to me. We 
care no more about the world in the year 2300 than we do 

15 about one of the planets. Even George IV. is better than the 
Earl of Windsor. We might as well make a voyage to the moon 
as think of stealing a march upon Time with impunity. De no7i 
appareiitibiis et non existentibus eadem est ratio. Those who are 
to come after us and push us from the stage seem like upstarts 

20 and pretenders, that may be said to exist in vacuo., we know not 
upon what, except as they are blown up with vain and self con- 
ceit by their patrons among the moderns. But the ancients are 
true and bond-Jide people, to whom we are bound by aggregate 
knowledge and filial ties, and in whom seen by the mellow light 

25 of history we feel our own existence doubled and our pride con- 
soled, as we ruminate on the vestiges of the past. The public 
in general, however, do not carry this speculative indifference 
about the future to what is to happen to themselves, or to the 
part they are to act in the busy scene. For my own part, I do ; 

30 and the only wish I can form, or that ever prompts the passing 
sigh, would be to live some of my years over again — they 
would be those in which I enjoyed and suffered most ! 

The ticking of a clock in the night has nothing very interest- 
ing nor very alarming in it, though superstition has magnified it 



ON A SUN-DIAL 28 1 

into an omen. In a state of vigilance or debility, it preys upon 
the spirits like the persecution of a teazing pertinacious insect ; 
and haunting the imagination after it has ceased in reality, is 
converted into the death-watch. Time is rendered vast by con- 
templating its minute portions thus repeatedly and painfully urged 5 
upon its attention, as the ocean in its immensity is composed of 
water-drops. A clock striking with a clear and silver sound is a 
great relief in such circumstances, breaks the spell, and resembles 
a sylph-like and friendly spirit in the room. Foreigners, with all 
their tricks and contrivances upon clocks and time-pieces, are 10 
strangers to the sound of village-bells, though perhaps a people 
that can dance may dispense with them. They impart a pensive, 
wayward pleasure to the mind, and are a kind of chronology of 
happy events, often serious in the retrospect— births, marriages, 
and so forth. Coleridge calls them " the poor man's only music." 15 
A village-spire in England peeping from its cluster of trees is 
always associated in imagination with this cheerful accompani- 
ment, and may be expected to pour its joyous tidings on the 
gale. In Catholic countries, you are stunned with the everlasting 
tolling of bells to prayers or for the dead. In the Apennines, 20 
and other wild and mountainous districts of Italy, the little chapel- 
bell with its simple tinkling sound has a romantic and charming 
effect. The Monks in former times appear to have taken a pride 
in the construction of bells as well as churches ; and some of 
those of the great cathedrals abroad (as at Cologne and Rouen) 25 
may be fairly said to be hoarse with counting the flight of ages. 
The chimes in Holland are a nuisance. They dance in the hours 
and the quarters. They leave no respite to the imagination. Be- 
fore one set has done ringing in your ears, another begins. You 
do not know whether the hours move or stand still, go back- 30 
wards or forwards, so fantastical and perplexing are their accom- 
paniments. Time is a more staid personage, and not so full of 
gambols. It puts you in mind of a tune with variations, or of 
an embroidered dress. Surely, nothing is more simple than time. 



282 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

His march is straightforward ; but we should have leisure allowed 

us to look back upon the distance we have come, and not be 

counting his steps every moment. Time in Holland is a foolish 

old fellow with all the antics of a youth, who " goes to church 

5 in a coranto, and lights his pipe in a cinque-pace." The chimes 

with us, on the contrary, as they come in every three or four 

hours, are like stages in the journey of the day. They give 

a fillip to the lazy, creeping hours, and relieve the lassitude of 

country-places. At noon, their desultory, trivial song is diffused 

lo through the hamlet with the odour of rashers of bacon ; at the 

close of day they send the toil-worn sleepers to their beds. 

Their discontinuance would be a great loss to the thinking 

or unthinking public. Mr. Wordsworth has painted their effect 

on the mind when he makes his friend Matthew, in a fit of 

1 5 inspired dotage, 

" Sing those witty rhymes 
About the crazy old church-clock 
And the bewilder'd chimes." 

The tolling of the bell for deaths and executions is a fearful 
2o summons, though, as it announces, not the advance of time but 
the approach of fate, it happily makes no part of our subject. 
Otherwise, the " sound of the bell " for Macheath's execution in 
the " Beggar's Opera," or for that of the Conspirators in "Venice 
Preserved," with the roll of the drum at a soldier's funeral, and 
25 a digression to that of my Uncle Toby, as it is so finely de- 
scribed by Sterne, would furnish ample topics to descant upon. 
If I were a moralist, I might disapprove the ringing in the new 
and ringing out the old year. 

" Why dance ye, mortals, o'er the grave of Time ? " 

30 St. Paul's bell tolls only for the death of our English kings, or 
a distinguished personage or two, with long intervals between.^ 

1 Rousseau has admirably described the effect of bells on the imagination in 
a passage in the Confessions, beginning "/.c soti dcs cloches m'a toujours smguliire- 
meut affecte," &c. 



ON A SUN-DIAL 283 

Those who have no artificial means of ascertaining the prog- 
ress of time, are in general the most acute in discerning its 
immediate signs, and are most retentive of individual dates. 
The mechanical aids to knowledge are not sharpeners of the 
wits. The understanding of a savage is a kind of natural alma- 5 
nac, and more true in its prognostication of the future. In his 
mind's eye he sees what has happened or what is likely to hap- 
pen to him, " as in a map the voyager his course." Those who 
read the times and seasons in the aspect of the heavens and the 
configurations of the stars, who count by moons and know when 10 
the sun rises and sets, are by no means ignorant of their own 
affairs or of the common concatenation of events. People in 
such situations have not their faculties distracted by any multi- 
plicity of inquiries beyond what befalls themselves, and the out- 
ward appearances that mark the change. There is, therefore, 15 
a simplicity and clearness in the knowledge they possess, which 
often puzzles the more learned. I am sometimes surprised at 
a shepherd-boy by the roadside, who sees nothing but the earth 
and sky, asking me the time of day — he ought to know so 
much better than any one how far the sun is above the horizon. 20 
I suppose he wants to ask a question of a passenger, or to see 
if he has a watch. Robinson Crusoe lost his reckoning in the 
monotony of his life and that bewildering dream of solitude, and 
was fain to have recourse to the notches in a piece of wood. 
What a diary was his ! And how time must have spread its 25 
circuit round him, vast and pathless as the ocean ! 

For myself, I have never had a watch nor any other mode of 
keeping time in my possession, nor ever wish to learn how time 
goes. It is a sign I have had little to do, few avocations, few en- 
gagements. When I am in a town, I can hear the clock ; and 30 
when I am in the country, I can listen to the silence. What I like 
best is to lie whole mornings on a sunny bank on Salisbury 
Plain, without any object before me, neither knowing nor caring 
how time passes, and thus " with light-winged toys of feathered 



284 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Idleness " to melt down hours to moments. Perhaps some such 
thoughts as I have here set down float before me like motes 
before my half-shut eyes, or some vivid image of the past by 
forcible contrast rushes by me — " Diana and her fawn, and all 
5 the glories of the antique world ; " then I start away to prevent 
the iron from entering my soul, and let fall some tears into that 
stream of time which separates me farther and farther from all 
I once loved ! At length I rouse myself from my reverie, and 
home to dinner, proud of killing time with thought, nay even 

10 without thinking. Somewhat of this idle humour I inherit from 
my father, though he had not the same freedom from etmiii, 
for he was not a metaphysician ; and there were stops and 
vacant intervals in his being which he did not know how to fill 
up. He used in these cases, and as an obvious resource, care- 

15 fully to wind up his watch at night, and " with lack-lustre eye" 
more than once in the course of the day look to see what o'clock 
it was. Yet he had nothing else in his character in common 
with the elder Mr. Shandy. Were I to attempt a sketch of him, 
for my own or the reader's satisfaction, it would be after the 

20 following manner : — but now I recollect, I have done something 
of the kind once before, and were I to resume the subject here, 
some bat or owl of a critic, with spectacled gravity, might swear 
I had stolen the whole of this Essay from myself — • or (what is 
worse) from him ! So I had better let it go as it is. 



ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 

" If to do were as easy as to teach others what were good to be done, 
chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces." 

Mr. Addison, it is said, was fond of tippling ; and Curl, it 
is added, when he called on him in the morning, used to ask as 
a particular favour for a glass of Canary, by way of ingrati- 
ating himself, and that the other might have a pretence to join 
him and finish the bottle. He fell a martyr to this habit, and 5 
yet (some persons more nice than wise exclaim), he desired that 
the young Earl of Warwick might attend him on his death-bed, 
" to see how a Christian could die ! " I see no inconsistency nor 
hypocrisy in this. A man may be a good Christian, a sound 
believer, and a sincere lover of virtue, and have, notwithstanding, 10 
one or more failings. If he had recommended it to others to 
get drunk, then I should have said he was a hypocrite, and that 
his pretended veneration for the Christian religion was a mere 
cloak put on to suit the purposes of fashion or convenience. 
His doing what it condemned was no proof of any such thing : 1 5 
" The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak." He is a 
hypocrite who professes what he does not believe ; not he who 
does not practise all he wishes or approves. It might on the 
same ground be argued, that a man is a hypocrite who admires 
Raphael or Shakespeare, because he cannot paint like the one, 20 
or write like the other. If any one really despised what he 
affected outwardly to admire, this would be hypocrisy. If he 
affected to admire it a great deal more than he really did, this 
would be cant. Sincerity has to do with the connexion between 
our words and thoughts, and not between our belief and actions. 25 

285 



286 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

The last constantly belie the strongest convictions and resolu- 
tions in the best of men ; it is only the base and dishonest who 
give themselves credit with their tongue, for sentiments and 
opinions which in their hearts they disown. 
5 I do not therefore think that the old theological maxim — 
" The greater the sinner, the greater the saint " — is so utterly 
unfounded. There is some mixture of truth in it. For as long 
as man is composed of two parts, body and soul ; and while these 
are allowed to pull different ways, I see no reason why, in propor- 

lo tion to the length the one goes, the opposition or reaction of 
the other should not be more violent. It is certain, for example, 
that no one makes such good resolutions as the sot and the 
gambler in their moments of repentance, or can be more im- 
pressed with the horrors of their situation ; — should this dis- 

1 5 position, instead of a transient, idle pang, by chance become lasting, 
who can be supposed to feel the beauty of temperance and 
economy more, or to look back with greater gratitude to their 
escape from the trammels of vice and passion ? Would the in- 
genious and elegant author of the Spectator feel less regard 

2o for the Scriptures, because they denounced in pointed terms the 
infirmity that " most easily beset him," that was the torment of 
his life, and the cause of his death? Such reasoning would be 
true, if man was a simple animal or a logical machine, and all 
his faculties and impulses were in strict unison ; instead of which 

25 they are eternally at variance, and no one hates or takes part 
against himself more heartily or heroically than does the same 
individual. Does he not pass sentence on his own conduct ? Is 
not his conscience both judge and accuser ? What else is the 
meaning of all our resolutions against ourselves, as well as of 

30 our exhortations to others ? Video meliora p/vboqiie, dderiora 
scqnor, is not the language of hypocrisy, but of human nature. 

The hypocrisy of priests has been a butt for ridicule in all 
ages ; but I am not sure that there has not been more wit than 
philosophy in it. A priest, it is true, is obliged to affect a greater 



ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 287 

degree of sanctity than ordinary men, and probably more than 
he possesses ; and this is so far, I am willing to allow, hypocrisy 
and solemn grimace. But I cannot admit, that though he may 
exaggerate, or even make an ostentatious display of religion and 
virtue through habit and spiritual pride, that this is a proof he 5 
has not these sentiments in his heart, or that his whole behaviour 
is the mere acting of a part. His character, his motives, are not 
altogether pure and sincere : are they therefore all false and 
hollow ? No such thing. It is contrary to all our observation 
and experience so to interpret it. We all wear some disguise — 10 
make some professions — use some artifice to set ourselves off 
as being better than we are ; and yet it is not denied that we 
have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom, 
though we may endeavour to keep some others that we think 
less to our credit as much as possible in the background : — 15 
why then should we not extend the same favourable construction 
to monks and friars, who may be sometimes caught tripping as 
well as other men — with less excuse, no doubt ; but if it is also 
with greater remorse of conscience, which probably often happens, 
their pretensions are not all downright, bare-faced imposture. 20 
Their sincerity, compared with that of other men, can only be 
judged of by the proportion between the degree of virtue they 
profess, and that which they practice, or at least carefully seek 
to realise. To conceive it otherwise, is to insist that characters 
must be all perfect, or all vicious — neither of which suppositions 25 
is even possible. If a clergyman is notoriously a drunkard, a 
debauchee, a glutton, or a scoffer, then for him to lay claim at 
the same time to extraordinary inspirations of faith or grace, is 
both scandalous and ridiculous. The scene between the Abbot 
and the poor brother in the " Duenna " is an admirable exposure 30 
of this double-faced dealing. But because a parson has a relish 
for the good things of this life, or what is commonly called a 
liquorish tooth in his head, (beyond what he would have it 
supposed by others, or even by himself,) that he has therefore 



288 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

no fear or belief of the next, I hold for a crude and vulgar prej- 
udice. If a poor half-starved parish priest pays his court to an 
olla podrida, or a venison pasty, with uncommon gusto, shall we 
say that he has no other sentiments in offering his devotions to 
5 a crucifix, or in counting his beads ? I see no more ground for 
such an inference, than for affirming that Handel was not in 
earnest when he sat down to compose a Symphony, because he 
had at the same time perhaps a bottle of cordials in his cupboard ; 
or that Raphael was not entitled to the epithet of divine, because 

10 he was attached to the Fornarina! Everything has its turn in 
this chequered scene of things, unless we prevent it from taking 
its turn by over-rigid conditions, or drive men to despair or the 
most callous effrontery, by erecting a standard of perfection, to 
which no one can conform in reality ! Thomson, in his " Castle 

15 of Indolence," (a subject on which his pen ran riot,) has indulged 
in rather a free description of " a little round, fat, oily man of 
God — 

" Who shone all glistening with ungodly dew, 
If a tight damsel chanced to trippen by; 

20 Which, when observed, he shrunk into his mew, 

And straight would recollect his piety anew." 

Now, was the piety in this case the less real, because it had been 
forgotten for a moment ? Or even if this motive should not prove 
the strongest in the end, would this therefore show that it was 

25 none, which is necessary to the argument here combated, or to 
make out our little plump priest a very knave ! A priest may be 
honest, and yet err ; as a woman may be modest, and yet half- 
inclined to be a rake. So the virtue of prudes may be suspected, 
though not their sincerity. The strength of their passions may 

30 make them more conscious of their weakness, and more cautious 
of exposing themselves ; but not more to blind others than as a 
guard upon themselves. Again, suppose a clergyman hazards a 
jest upon sacred subjects, does it follow that he does not be- 
lieve a word of the matter? Put the case that any one else, 



ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 289 

encouraged by his example, takes up the banter or levity, and 
see what effect it will have upon the reverend divine. He will 
turn round like a serpent trod upon, with all the vehemence and 
asperity of the most bigoted orthodoxy. Is this dictatorial and 
exclusive spirit then put on merely as a mask and to browbeat 5 
others .-' No ; but he thinks he is privileged to trifle with the sub- 
ject safely himself, from the store of evidence he has in reserve, 
and from the nature of his functions ; but he is afraid of serious 
consequences being drawn from what others might say, or from 
his seeming to countenance it ; and the moment the Church is in 10 
danger, or his own faith brought in question, his attachment to 
each becomes as visible as his hatred to those who dare to im- 
pugn either the one or the other. A woman's attachment to her 
husband is not to be suspected, if she will allow no one to abuse 
him but herself ! It has been remarked, that with the spread of 1 5 
liberal opinions, or a more general scepticism on articles of faith, 
the clergy and religious persons in general have become more 
squeamish and jealous of any objections to their favourite doc- 
trines : but this is what must follow in the natural course of 
things — the resistance being always in proportion to the danger ; 20 
and arguments and books that were formerly allowed to pass 
unheeded, because it was supposed impossible they could do any 
mischief, are now denounced or prohibited with the most zealous 
vigilance, from a knowledge of the contagious nature of their 
influence and contents. So in morals, it is obvious that the 25 
greatest nicety of expression and allusion must be observed, 
where the manners are the most corrupt, and the imagination 
most easily excited, not out of mere affectation, but as a dictate 
of common sense and decency. 

One of the finest remarks that has been made in modern 30 
times, is that of Lord Shaftesbury, that there is no such thing 
as a perfect Theist, or an absolute Atheist ; that whatever may 
be the general conviction entertained on the subject, the evidence 
is not and cannot be at all times equally present to the mind; 



290 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

that even if it were, we are not in the same humour to receive 
it : a fit of the gout, a shower of rain shakes our best-established 
conclusions ; and according to circumstances and the frame of 
mind we are in, our belief varies from the most sanguine enthu- 
5 siasm to lukewarm indifference, or the most gloomy despair. 
There is a point of conceivable faith which might prevent any 
lapse from virtue, and reconcile all contrarieties between theoiy 
and practice ; but this is not to be looked for in the ordinary 
course of nature, and is reserved for the abodes of the blest. 

10 Here, " upon this bank and shoal of time," the utmost we can 
hope to attain is, a strong habitual belief in the excellence of 
virtue, or the dispensations of Providence ; and the conflict of 
the passions, and their occasional mastery over us, far from dis- 
proving or destroying this general, rational conviction, often fling 

1 5 us back more forcibly upon it, and like other infidelities and mis- 
understandings, produce all the alternate remorse and raptures 
of repentance and reconciliation. 

It has been frequently remarked that the most obstinate 
heretic or confirmed sceptic, witnessing the service of the Roman 

20 Catholic church, the elevation of the host amidst the sounds 
of music, the pomp of ceremonies, the embellishments of art, 
feels himself spell-bound ; and is almost persuaded to become a 
renegade to his reason or his religion. Even in hearing a vespers 
chaunted on the stage, or in reading an account of a torch-light 

25 procession in a romance, a superstitious awe creeps over the 
frame, and we are momentarily charmed out of ourselves. When 
such is the obvious and involuntary influence of circumstances 
on the imagination, shall we say that a monkish recluse sur- 
rounded from his childhood by all this pomp, a stranger to any 

30 other faith, who has breathed no other atmosphere, and all 
whose meditations are bent on this one subject both by interest 
and habit and duty, is to be set down as a rank and heartless 
mountebank in the professions he makes of belief in it, because 
his thoughts may sometimes wander to forbidden subjects, or 



ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 29I 

his feet stumble on forbidden ground ? Or shall not the deep 
shadows of the woods in Vallombrosa enhance the solemnity of 
this feeling, or the icy horrors of the Grand Chartreux add to 
its elevation and its purity ? To argue otherwise is to misdeem 
of human nature, and to limit its capacities for good or evil by 5 
some narrow-minded standard of our own. Man is neither 
a God nor a brute ; but there is a prosaic and a poetical side to 
everything concerning him, and it is as impossible absolutely 
and for a constancy to exclude either one or the other from the 
mind, as to make him live without air or food. The ideal^ the 10 
empire of thought and aspiration after truth and good, is in- 
separable from the nature of an intellectual being — what right 
have we then to catch at every strife which in the mortified pro- 
fessors of religion the spirit wages with the flesh as grossly 
vicious, or at every doubt, the bare suggestion of which fills them 1 5 
with consternation and despair, as a proof of the most glaring 
hypocrisy ? The grossnesses of religion and its stickling for mere 
forms as its essence, have given a handle, and a just one, to its 
impugners. At the feast of Ramadan (says Voltaire) the Mus- 
sulmans wash and pray five times a day, and then fall to cutting 20 
one another's throats again with the greatest deliberation and 
good-will. The two things, I grant, are sufficiently at variance ; 
but they are, I contend, equally sincere in both. The Mahometans 
are savages, but they are not the less true believers — they hate 
their enemies as heartily as they revere the Koran. This, instead 25 
of showing the fallacy of the ideal principle, shows its univer- 
sality and indestructible essence. Let a man be as bad as he 
will, as little refined as possible, and indulge whatever hurtful 
passions or gross vices he thinks proper, these cannot occupy 
the whole of his time ; and in the intervals between one scoun- 30 
drel action and another he may and must have better thoughts, 
and may have recourse to those of religion (true or false) among 
the number, without in this being guilty of hypocrisy or of mak- 
ing a jest of what is considered as sacred. This, I take it, is the 



292 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

whole secret of Methodism, which is a sort of modern vent for 
the ebullitions of the spirit through the gaps of unrighteousness. 
We often see that a person condemns in another the very 
thing he is guilty of himself. Is this hypocrisy ? It may, or it 
5 may not. If he really feels none of the disgust and abhorrence 
he expresses, this is quackery and impudence. But if he really 
expresses what he feels, (and he easily may, for it is the abstract 
idea he contemplates in the case of another, and the immediate 
temptation to which he yields in his own, so that he probably is 

lo not even conscious of the identity or connexion between the 
two,) then this is not hypocrisy, but want of strength and keep- 
ing in the moral sense. All morality consists in squaring our actions 
and sentiments to our ideas of what is fit and proper ; and it is 
the incessant struggle and alternate triumph of the two principles, 

15 the ideal and the physical, that keeps up this " mighty coil and 
pudder " about vice and virtue, and is one great source of all 
the good and evil in the world. The mind of man is like a clock 
that is always running down, and requires to be as constantly 
wound up. The ideal principle is the master-key that winds it 

20 up, and without which it would come to a stand : the sensual 
and selfish feelings are the dead weights that pull it down to the 
gross and grovelling. Till the intellectual faculty is destroyed, 
(so that the mind sees nothing beyond itself, or the present 
moment,) it is impossible to have all brutal depravity : till the 

25 material and physical are done away with, (so that it shall con- 
template everything from a purely spiritual and disinterested 
point of view,) it is impossible to have all virtue. There must 
be a mixture of the two, as long as man is compounded of oppo- 
site materials, a contradiction and an eternal competition for 

30 the mastery. I by no means think a single bad action condemns 
a man, for he probably condemns it as much as you do ; nor a 
single bad habit, for he is probably trying all his life to get rid 
of it. A man is only thoroughly profligate when he has loBt the 
sense of right and wrong ; or a thorough hypocrite, when he 



ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 293 

has not even the wish to be what he appears. The greatest 
offence against virtue is to speak ill of it. To recommend certain 
things is worse than to practise them. There may be an excuse 
for the last in the frailty of passion ; but the former can arise 
from nothing but an utter depravity of disposition. Any one 5 
may yield to temptation, and yet feel a sincere love and aspira- 
tion after virtue : but he who maintains vice in theory, has not 
even the conception or capacity for virtue in his mind. Men 
err : fiends only make a mock at goodness. 

We sometimes deceive ourselves, and think worse of human 10 
nature than it deserves, in consequence of judging of character 
from names, and classes, and modes of life. No one is simply 
and absolutely any one thing, though he may be branded with 
it as a name. Some persons have expected to see his crimes 
written in the face of a murderer, and have been disappointed 15 
because they did not, as if this impeached the distinction be- 
tween virtue and vice. Not at all. The circumstance only 
showed that the man was other things, and had other feelings 
besides those of a murderer. If he had nothing else, — if he 
had fed on nothing else, — if he had dreamt of nothing else, but 20 
schemes of murder, his features would have expressed nothing 
else : but this perfection in vice is not to be expected from the 
contradictory and mixed nature of our motives. Humanity is to 
be met with in a den of robbers ; nay, modesty in a brothel. 
Even among the most abandoned of the other sex, there is not 25 
unfrequently found to exist (contrary to all that is generally 
supposed) one strong and individual attachment, which remains 
unshaken to the last. Virtue may be said to steal, like a guilty 
thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy; it clings to 
their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Noth- 30 
ing can destroy the human heart. Again, there is a heroism 
in crime, as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have also their 
altars and their religion. This makes nothing in their favour, 
but is a proof of the heroical disinterestedness of man's nature, 



294 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and that whatever he does, he must fling a dash of romance 
and sublimity into it ; just as some grave biographer has said 
of Shakespeare, that " even when he killed a calf, he made a 
speech and did it in a great style." 
5 It is then impossible to get rid of this original distinction and 
contradictory bias, and to reduce everything to the system of 
French levity and Epicurean indifference. Wherever there is a 
capacity of conceiving of things as different from what they are, 
there must be a principle of taste and selection — a disposition 

lo to make them better, and a power to make them worse. Ask a 
Parisian milliner if she does not think one bonnet more becom- 
ing than another — a Parisian dancing-master if French grace 
is not better than English awkwardness — a French cook if all 
sauces are alike — a French blacklegs if all throws are equal on 

1 5 the dice ? It is curious that the French nation restrict rigid 
rules and fixed principles to cookery and the drama, and main- 
tain that the great drama of human life is entirely a matter of 
caprice and fancy. No one will assert that Raphael's histories, 
that Claude's landscapes are not better than a daub : but if the 

2o expression in one of Raphael's faces is better than the most 
mean and vulgar, how resist the consequence that the feeling 
so expressed is better also } It does not appear to me that all 
faces or all actions are alike. If goodness were only a theory, 
it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a 

25 number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. 
Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as 
long as they will — the very names of these despised qualities 
are better than anything else that could be substituted for 
them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against 

30 them. It is no small consideration that the mind is capable even 
of feigning such things. So I would contend against that rea- 
soning which would have it thought that if religion is not true, 
there is no difference between mankind and the beasts that 
perish ; — I should say, that this distinction is equally proved, if 



ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 295 

religion is supposed to be a mere fabrication of the human 
mind ; the capacity to conceive it makes the difference. The 
idea alone of an over-ruling Providence, or of a future state, is 
as much a distinctive mark of a superiority of nature, as the 
invention of the mathematics, which are true, — or of poetry, 5 
which is a fable. Whatever the truth or falsehood of our spec- 
ulations, the power to make them is peculiar to ourselves. 

The contrariety and warfare of different faculties and dis- 
positions within us has not only given birth to the Manichean 
and Gnostic heresies, and to other superstitions of the East, but 10 
will account for many of the mummeries and dogmas both of 
Popery and Calvinism, — ■ confession, absolution, justification by 
faith, &c. ; which, in the hopelessness of attaining perfection, 
and our dissatisfaction with ourselves for falling short of it, are 
all substitutes for actual virtue, and an attempt to throw the 15 
burthen of a task, to which we are unequal or only half dis- 
posed, on the merits of others, or on outward forms, cere- 
monies, and professions of faith. Hence the crowd of 

" Eremites and friars, 
White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery." 20 

If we do not conform to the law, we at least acknowledge 
the jurisdiction of the court. A person does wrong ; he is sorry 
for it ; and as he still feels himself liable to error, he is desirous 
to make atonement as well as he can, by ablutions, by tithes, by 
penance, by sacrifices, or other voluntary demonstrations of 25 
obedience, which are in his power, though his passions are not, 
and which prove that his will is not refractory, and that his 
understanding is right towards God. The stricter tenets of 
Calvinism, which allow of no medium between grace and rep- 
robation, and doom man to eternal punishment for every breach 30 
of the moral law, as an equal offence against infinite truth and 
justice, proceed (like the paradoxical doctrine of the Stoics) 
from taking a half -view of this subject, and considering man 



296 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

as amenable only to the dictates of his understanding and his 
conscience, and not excusable from the temptations and frailty 
of human ignorance and passion. The mixing up of religion 
and morality together, or the making us accountable for every 
5 word, thought, or action, under no less a responsibility than our 
everlasting future welfare or misery, has also added incalculably 
to the difficulties of self-knowledge, has superinduced a violent 
and spurious state of feeling, and made it almost impossible to 
distinguish the boundaries between the true and false, in judging 

10 of human conduct and motives. A religious man is afraid of 
looking into the state of his soul, lest at the same time he should 
reveal it to Heaven ; and tries to persuade himself that by shut- 
ting his eyes to his true character and feelings, they will remain 
a profound secret both here and hereafter. This is a strong 

1 5 engine and irresistible inducement to self-deception ; and the 
more zealous any one is in his convictions of the truth of religion, 
the more we may suspect the sincerity of his pretensions to 
piety and morality. 

Thus, though I think there is very little downright hypocrisy 

20 in the world, I do think there is a great deal of cant — "cant re- 
ligious, cant political, cant literary," &c., as Lord Byron said. 
Though few people have the face to set up for the very thing 
they in their hearts despise, we almost all want to be thought 
better than we are, and affect a greater admiration or abhorrence 

25 of certain things than we really feel. Indeed, some degree of 
affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body ; 
we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce 
any effect at all. There was formerly the two hours' sermon, the 
long-winded grace, the nasal drawl, the uplifted hands and eyes ; 

30 all which, though accompanied with some corresponding emotion, 
expressed more than was really felt, and were in fact intended 
to make up for the conscious deficiency. As our interest in 
anything wears out with time and habit, we exaggerate the out- 
ward symptoms of zeal as mechanical helps to devotion, dwell 



ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 297 

the longer on our words as they are less felt, and hence the 
very origin of the term, cant. The cant of sentimentality has 
succeeded to that of religion. There is a cant of humanity, 
of patriotism and loyalty — not that people do not feel these 
emotions, but they make too great difuss about them, and drawl 5 
out the expression of them till they tire themselves and others. 
There is a cant about Shakespeare. There is a cant about 
Political Economy just now. In short, there is and must be a 
cant about everything that excites a considerable degree of 
attention and interest, and that people would be thought to 10 
know and care rather more about than they actually do. Cant 
is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real senti- 
ment ; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you 
never had and have no wish for. Mr. Coleridge is made up 
of cant, that is, of mawkish affectation and sensibility; but he 15 
has not sincerity enough to be a hypocrite, that is, he has not 
hearty dislike or contempt enough for anything, to give the lie 
to his puling professions of admiration and esteem for it. The 
fuss that Mr. Liberal Snake makes about Political Economy is 
not cant, but what Mr. Theodore Hook politely calls himibng ; 20 
he himself is hardly the dupe of his own pompous reasoning, 
but he wishes to make it the stalking-horse of his ambition or 
interest to sneak into a place and curry favour with the 
Government. 



A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 

" This life is best, if quiet life is best." 

■ Food, warmth, sleep, and a book ; these are all I at present 

ask — the ultima thiile of my wandering desires. Do you not 

then wish for 
5 "A friend in your retreat. 

Whom you may whisper, solitude is sweet ? " 

Expected, well enough : — gone, still better. Such attractions are 
strengthened by distance. Nor a mistress ? " Beautiful mask ! 
I know thee ! " When I can judge of the heart from the face, 

lo of the thoughts from the lips, I may again trust myself. Instead 
of these, give me the robin red-breast, pecking the crumbs at the 
door, or warbling on the leafless spray, the same glancing form 
that has followed me wherever I have been, and " done its spirit- 
ing gently ; " or the rich notes of the thrush that startle the ear 

15 of winter, and seem to have drunk up the full draught of joy 
from the very sense of contrast. To these I adhere and am 
faithful, for they are true to me ; and, dear in themselves, are 
dearer for the sake of what is departed, leading me back (by the 
hand) to that dreaming world, in the innocence of which they 

20 sat and made sweet music, waking the promise of future years, 
and answered by the eager throbbings of my own breast. But 
now " the credulous hope of mutual minds is o'er," and I turn 
back from the world that has deceived me, to nature that lent 
it a false beauty, and that keeps up the illusion of the past. As 

25 I quaff my libations of tea in a morning, I love to watch the 
clouds sailing from the west, and fancy that " the spring comes 
slowly up this way." In this hope, while " fields are dank and 
ways are mire," I follow the same direction to a neighbouring 

298 



A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 299 

wood, where, having gained the dry, level greensward, I can see 
my way for a mile before me, closed in on each side by copse- 
wood, and ending in a point of light more or less brilliant, as the 
day is bright or cloudy. What a walk is this to me ! I have no 
need of book or companion — the days, the hours, the thoughts 5 
of my youth are at my side, and blend with the air that fans my 
cheek. Here I can saunter for hours, bending my eye forward, 
stopping and turning to look back, thinking to strike off into 
some less trodden path, yet hesitating to quit the one I am in, 
afraid to snap the brittle threads of memory. I remark the shin- 10 
ing trunks and slender branches of the birch trees, waving in the 
idle breeze ; or a pheasant springs up on whirring wing ; or I 
recall the spot where I once found a wood-pigeon at the foot of 
a tree, weltering in its gore, and think how many seasons have 
flown since "it left its little life in air." Dates, names, faces 15 
come back — • to what purpose ? Or why think of them now ? 
Or rather, why not think of them oftener ? We walk through life, 
as through a narrow path, with a thin curtain drawn around it ; 
behind are ranged rich portraits, airy harps are strung — yet we 
will not stretch forth our hands and lift aside the veil, to catch 20 
glimpses of the one, or sweep the chords of the other. As in a 
theatre, when the old-fashioned green curtain drew up, groups 
of figures, fantastic dresses, laughing faces, rich banquets, stately 
columns, gleaming vistas appeared beyond ; so we have only at 
any time to " peep through the blanket of the past," to possess 25 
ourselves at once of all that has regaled our senses, that is stored 
up in our memory, that has struck our fancy, that has pierced 
our hearts : — yet to all this we are indifferent, insensible, and 
seem intent only on the present vexation, the future disappoint- 
ment. If there is a Titian hanging up in the room with me, I 30 
scarcely regard it : how then should I be expected to strain the 
mental eye so far, or to throw down, by the magic spells of the 
will, the stone-walls that enclose it in the Louvre .-" There is one 
head there of which I have often thought, when looking at it, 



300 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

that nothing should ever disturb me again, and I would become 
the character it represents — such perfect calmness and self- 
possession reigns in it ! Why do I not hang an image of this in 
some dusky corner of my brain, and turn an eye upon it ever 

5 and anon, as I have need of some such talisman to calm my 
troubled thoughts ? The attempt is f ruidess, if not natural ; or, 
like that of the French, to hang garlands on the grave, and to 
conjure back the dead by miniature pictures of them while living! 
It is only some actual coincidence, or local association that tends, 

lo without violence, to " open all the cells where memory slept." 
I can easily, by stooping over the long-sprent grass and clay-cold 
clod, recall the tufts of primroses, or purple hyacinths, that for- 
merly grew on the same spot, and cover the bushes with leaves 
and singing-birds, as they were eighteen summers ago ; or pro- 

15 longing my walk and hearing the sighing gale rustle through a 
tall, strait wood at the end of it, can fancy that I distinguish 
the cry of hounds, and the fatal group issuing from it, as in the 
tale of Theodore and Honoria. A moaning gust of wind aids the 
belief ; I look once more to see whether the trees before me 

20 answer to the idea of the horror-stricken grove, and an air-built 
city towers over their grey tops. 

" Of all the cities in Romanian lands, 
The chief and most renown'd Ravenna stands." 

I return home resolved to read the entire poem through, and, 
25 after dinner, drawing my chair to the fire, and holding a small 
print close to my eyes, launch into the full tide of Dryden's 
couplets (a stream of sound), comparing his didactic and de- 
scriptive pomp with the simple pathos and picturesque truth of 
Boccacio's story, and tasting with a pleasure, which none but an 
30 habitual reader can feel, some quaint examples of pronunciation 
in this accomplished versifier. 

" Which when Honoria view'd, 
The fresh impulse her former fright renew'd." 

Theodore and Honoria 



A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 301 

" And made th' insult, which in his grief appears, 
The means to mourn thee with my pious tears." 

Sigismonda and Gtiisca7-do 

These trifling instances of the wavering and unsettled state of 
the language give double effect to the firm and stately march 
of the verse, and make me dwell with a sort of tender interest 5 
on the difficulties and doubts of an earlier period of literature. 
They pronounced words then in a manner which we should laugh 
at now; and they wrote verse in a manner which we can do 
anything but laugh at. The pride of a new acquisition seems to 
give fresh confidence to it ; to impel the rolling syllables through 10 
the moulds provided for them, and to overflow the envious 
bounds of rhyme into time-honoured triplets. I am much pleased 
with Leigh Hunt's mention of Moore's involuntary admiration 
of Dryden's free, unshackled verse, and of his repeating con 
amore, and with an Irish spirit and accent, the fine lines — 1 5 

" Let honour and preferment go for gold, 
But glorious beauty is n't to be sold." 

What sometimes surprises me in looking back to the past, is, 

with the exception already stated, to find myself so little changed 

in the time. The same images and trains of thought stick by 20 

me : I have the same tastes, likings, sentiments, and wishes 

that I had then. One great ground of confidence and support 

has, indeed, been struck from under my feet ; but I have made 

it up to myself by proportionable pertinacity of opinion. The 

success of the great cause, to which I had vowed myself, was 25 

to me more than all the world : I had a strength in its strength, 

a resource which I knew not of, till it failed me for the second 

time. 

" Fall'n was Glenartny's stately tree ! 
Oh ! ne'er to see Lord Ronald more ! " 30 

It was not till I saw the axe laid to the root, that I found the 
full extent of what I had to lose and suffer. But my conviction 
of the right was only established by the triumph of the wrong ; 



302 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

and my earliest hopes will be my last regrets. One source of 
this unbendingness, (which some may call obstinacy) is that, 
though living much alone, I have never worshipped the Echo. 
I see plainly enough that black is not white, that the grass is 

' 5 green, that kings are not their subjects ; and, in such self-evident 
cases, do not think it necessary to collate my opinions with the 
received prejudices. In subtler questions, and matters that admit 
of doubt, as I do not impose my opinion on others without 
a reason, so I will not give up mine to them without a better 

lo reason ; and a person calling me names, or giving himself airs 
of authority, does not convince me of his having taken more 
pains to find out the truth than I have, but the contrary. Mr. 
Gifford once said, that " while I was sitting over my gin and 
tobacco-pipes, I fancied myself a Leibnitz." He did not so much 

1 5 as know that I had ever read a metaphysical book : — was I 
therefore, out of complaisance or deference to him, to forget 
whether I had or not ? I am rather disappointed, both on my 
own account and his, that Mr. Hunt has missed the opportunity 
of explaining the character of a friend, as clearly as he might 

20 have done. He is puzzled to reconcile the shyness of my pre- 
tensions with the inveteracy and sturdiness of my principles. 
I should have thought they were nearly the same thing. Both 
from disposition and habit, I can assume nothing in word, look, 
or manner. I cannot steal a march upon public opinion in any 

25 way. My standing upright, speaking loud, entering a room 
gracefully, proves nothing ; therefore I neglect these ordinary 
means of recommending myself to the good graces and admira- 
tion of strangers, (and, as it appears, even of philosophers and 
friends). Why ? Because I have other resources, or, at least, 

30 am absorbed in other studies and pursuits. Suppose this absorp- 
tion to be extreme, and even morbid — that I have brooded over 
an idea till it has become a kind of substance in my brain, that 
I have reasons for a thing which I have found out with much 
labour and pains, and to which I can scarcely do justice without 



A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 303 

the utmost violence of exertion (and that only to a few persons) 
— is this a reason for my playing off my out-of-the-way notions 
in all companies, wearing a prim and self-complacent air, as if 
I were " the admired of all observers ? " or is it not rather an 
argument, (together with a want of animal spirits), why I should 5 
retire into myself, and perhaps acquire a nervous and uneasy 
look, from a consciousness of the disproportion between the 
interest and conviction I feel on certain subjects, and my ability 
to communicate what weighs upon my own mind to others ? If 
my ideas, which I do not avouch, but suppose, lie below the 10 
surface, why am I to be always attempting to dazzle super- 
ficial people with them, or smiling, delighted, at my own want 
of success ? 

What I have here stated is only the excess of the common 
and well-known English and scholastic character. I am neither 15 
a buffoon, a fop, nor a Frenchman, which Mr. Hunt would have 
me to be. He finds it odd that I am a close reasoner and a 
loose dresser. I have been (among other follies) a hard liver as 
well as a hard thinker ; and the consequences of that will not 
allow me to dress as I please. People in real life are not like 20 
players on a stage, who put on a certain look or costume^ merely 
for effect. I am aware, indeed, that the gay and airy pen of the 
author does not seriously probe the errors or misfortunes of his 
friends — he only glances at their seeming peculiarities, so as to 
make them odd and ridiculous ; for which forbearance few of 25 
them will thank him. Why does he assert that I was vain of my 
hair when it was black, and am equally vain of it now it is grey, 
when this is true in neither case ? This transposition of motives 
makes me almost doubt whether Lord Byron was thinking so 
much of the rings on his fingers as his biographer was. These 30 
sort of criticisms should be left to women. I am made to wear 
a little hat, stuck on the top of my head the wrong way. Nay, 
I commonly wear a large slouching hat over my eyebrows ; and 
if ever I had another, I must have twisted it about in any shape 



304 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

to get rid of the annoyance. This probably tickled Mr. Hunt's 
fancy, and retains possession of it, to the exclusion of the obvious 
truism, that I naturally wear '' a melancholy hat." 

I am charged with using strange gestures and contortions of 

. 5 features in argument, in order to " look energetic." One would 
rather suppose that the heat of the argument produced the 
extravagance of the gestures, as I am said to be calm at other 
times. It is like saying that a man in a passion clenches his 
teeth, not because he is, but in order to seem, angry. Why 

lo should everything be construed into air and affectation ? With 
Hamlet, I may say, " I know not sec?Hs." 

Again, my old friend and pleasant " Companion " remarks it, 
as an anomaly in my character, that I crawl about the Fives- 
Court like a cripple till I get the racket in my hand, when I 

15 start up as if I was possessed with a devil. I have then a 
motive for exertion ; I lie by for difficulties and extreme cases. 
Aut Ccesar ant niiUus. I have no notion of doing nothing with 
an air of importance, nor should I ever take a liking to the 
game of battledoor and shuttlecock. I have only seen by acci- 

20 dent a page of the unpublished Manuscript relating to the 
present subject, which I dare say is, on the whole, friendly and 
just, and which has been suppressed as being too favourable, 
considering certain prejudices against me. 

In matters of taste and feeling, one proof that my conclusions 

25 have not been quite shallow or hasty, is the circumstance of their 
having been lasting. I have the same favourite books, pictures, 
passages that I ever had : I may therefore presume that they 
will last me my life — nay, I may indulge a hope that my 
thoughts will survive me. This continuity of impression is the 

30 only thing on which I pride myself. Even L , whose relish 

on certain things is as keen and earnest as possible, takes a 
surfeit of admiration, and I should be afraid to ask about his 
select authors or particular friends, after a lapse of ten years. 
As to myself, any one knows where to have me. What I have 



A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 305 

once made up my mind to, I abide by to the end of the chapter. 
One cause of my independence of opinion is, I believe, the 
liberty I give to others, or the very diffidence and distrust of 
making converts. I should be an excellent man on a jury : 
I might say little, but should starve " the other eleven obstinate 5 
fellows " out. I remember Mr. Godwin writing to Mr. Words- 
worth, that " his tragedy of Antonio could not fail of success." 
It was damned past all redemption. I said to Mr. Wordsworth 
that I thought this a natural consequence ; for how could any 
one have a dramatic turn of mind who judged entirely of others 10 
from himself ? Mr. Godwin might be convinced of the excellence 
of his work ; but how could he know that others would be con- 
vinced of it, unless by supposing that they were as wise as him- 
self, and as infallible critics of dramatic poetry — so many 
Aristotles sitting in judgment on Euripides! This shows why 15 
pride is connected with shyness and reserve ; for the really 
proud have not so high an opinion of the generality as to sup- 
pose that they can understand them, or that there is any 
common measure between them. So Dryden exclaims of his 
opponents with bitter disdain — 20 

" Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive." 

I have not sought to make partisans, still less did I dream of 
making enemies ; and have therefore kept my opinions myself, 
whether they were currently adopted or not. To get others to 
come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs ; and 25 
it is necessary to follow, in order to lead. At the time I lived 
here formerly, I had no suspicion that I should ever become a 
voluminous writer ; yet I .had just the same confidence in my 
feelings before I had ventured to air them in public as I have 
now. Neither the outcry/^;/' or against moves me a jot: I do 30 
not say that the one is not more agreeable than the other. 

Not far from the spot where I write, I first read Chaucer's 
Flower and Leaf, and was charmed with that young beauty. 



306 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

shrouded in her bower, and listening with ever-fresh delight to 
the repeated song of the nightingale close by her — the impres- 
sion of the scene, the vernal landscape, the cool of the morning, 
the gushing notes of the songstress, 

5 " And ayen, methought she sung close by mine ear," 

is as vivid as if it had been of yesterday ; and nothing can per- 
suade me that that is not a fine poem. I do not find this im- 
pression conveyed in Dryden's version, and therefore nothing 
can persuade me that that is as fine. I used to walk out at this 

lo time with Mr. and Miss L of an evening, to look at the 

Claude Lorraine skies over our heads, melting from azure into 
purple and gold, and to gather mushrooms, that sprung up at 
our feet, to throw into our hashed mutton at supper. I was at 
that time an enthusiastic admirer of Claude, and could dwell for 

15 ever on one or two of the finest prints from him hung round 
my little room ; the fleecy flocks, the bending trees, the winding 
streams, the groves, the nodding temples, the air-wove hills, and 
distant sunny vales ; and tried to translate them into their lovely 
living hues. People then told me that Wilson was much superior 

20 to Claude. I did not believe them. Their pictures have since 
been seen together at the British Institution, and all the world 
have come into my opinion. I have not, on that account, given 
it up. I will not compare our hashed mutton with Amelia's ; 
but it put us in mind of it, and led to a discussion, sharply 

25 seasoned and well sustained, till midnight, the result of which 
appeared some years after in the Edinburgh Review. Have I 
a better opinion of those criticisms on that account, or should I 
therefore maintain them with greater vehemence and tenacious- 
ness ? Oh no ! Both rather with less, now that they are before 

30 the public, and it is for them to make their election. 

It is in looking back to such scenes that I draw my best con- 
solation for the future. Later impressions come and go, and 
serve to fill up the intervals ; but these are my standing resource, 



A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 307 

my true classics. If I have had few real pleasures or advantages, 
my ideas, from their sinewy texture, have been to me in the 
nature of realities ; and if I should not be able to add to the 
stock, I can live by husbanding the interest. As to my specula- 
tions, there is little to admire in them but my admiration of 5 
others ; and whether they have an echo in time to come or not, 
I have learned to set a grateful value on the past, and am con- 
tent to wind up the account of what is personal only to myself 
and the immediate circle of objects in which I have moved, with 
an act of easy oblivion, 10 

" And curtain close such scene from every future view. 



THE SICK CHAMBER 

What a difference between this subject and my last — a " Free 
Admission ! " Yet from the crowded theatre to the sick chamber, 
from the noise, the glare, the keen delight, to the loneliness, the 
darkness, the dulness, and the pain, there is but one step. A 
5 breath of air, an overhanging cloud, effects it ; and though the 
transition is made in an instant, it seems as if it would last for 
ever. A sudden illness not only puts a stop to the career of 
our triumphs and agreeable sensations, but blots out and cancels 
all recollection of and desire for them. We lose the relish of 

10 enjoyment ; we are effectually cured of our romance. Our 
bodies are confined to our beds ; nor can our thoughts wantonly 
detach themselves and take the road to pleasure, but turn back 
with doubt and loathing at the faint evanescent phantom which 
has usurped its place. If the folding-doors of the imagination 

15 were thrown open or left a-jar, so that from the disordered 
couch where we lay, we could still hail the vista of the past or 
future, and see the gay and gorgeous visions floating at a dis- 
tance, however denied to our embrace, the contrast, though 
mortifying, might have something soothing in it, the mock- 

20 splendour might be the greater for the actual gloom : but the 
misery is that we cannot conceive anything beyond or better 
than the present evil ; we are shut up and spell-bound in that, 
the curtains of the mind are drawn close, we cannot escape from 
" the body of this death," our souls are conquered, dismayed, 

25 " cooped and cabined in," and thrown with the lumber of our 
corporeal frames in one corner of a neglected and solitary room. 
We hate ourselves and every thing else ; nor does one ray of 
comfort " peep through the blanket of the dark " to give us 

30S 



THE SICK CHAMBER 309 

hope. How should we entertain the image of grace and beauty, 
when our bodies writhe with pain ? To what purpose invoke 
the echo of some rich strain of music, when we ourselves can 
scarcely breathe ? The very attempt is an impossibility. We 
give up the vain task of linking delight to agony, of urging tor- 5 
por into ecstasy, which makes the very heart sick. We feel the 
present pain, and an impatient longing to get rid of it. This 
were indeed " a consummation devoutly to be wished : " on this 
we are intent, in earnest, inexorable : all else is impertinence 
and folly ; and could we but obtain ease (that Goddess of the 10 
infirm and suffering) at any price, we think we could forswear 
all other joy and all other sorrows. Hoc erat in votis. All other 
things but our disorder and its cure seem less than nothing and 
vanity. It assumes a palpable form ; it becomes a demon, a 
spectre, an incubus hovering over and oppressing us : we grap- 1 5 
pie with it : it strikes its fangs into us, spreads its arms round 
us, infects us with its breath, glares upon us with its hideous 
aspect ; we feel it take possession of every fibre and of every 
faculty ; and we are at length so absorbed and fascinated by it, 
that we cannot divert our reflections from it for an instant, for 20 
all other things but pain (and that which we suffer most acutely), 
appear to have lost their pith and power to interest. They are 
turned to dust and stubble. This is the reason of the fine 
resolutions we sometimes form in such cases, and of the vast 
superiority of the sick bed to the pomps and thrones of the 25 
world. We easily renounce wine when we have nothing but 
the taste of physic in our mouths : the rich banquet tempts us 
not, when " our very gorge rises " within us : Love and Beauty 
fly from a bed twisted into a thousand folds by restless lassitude 
and tormenting cares : the nerve of pleasure is killed by the 30 
pains that shoot through the head or rack the limbs : and indi- 
gestion seizes you with its leaden grasp and giant force (down, 
Ambition !) — you shiver and tremble like a leaf in a fit of the 
ague. (Avarice, let go your palsied hold ! ) We then are in the 



3IO SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

mood, without ghostly advice, to betake ourselves to the life of 

" hermit poor," 

" In pensive place obscure, — " 

and should be glad to prevent the return of a fever raging in 
5 the blood by feeding on pulse, and slaking our thirst at the 
limpid brook. The sudden resolutions, however, or "vows 
made in pain as violent and void," are generally of short dura- 
tion : the excess and the sorrow for it are alike selfish ; and 
those repentances which are the most loud and passionate are 
10 the surest to end speedily in a relapse ; for both originate in 
the same cause, the being engrossed by the prevailing feeling 
(whatever it may be), and an utter incapacity to look beyond it. 

" The Devil w^as sick, the Devil a monk would be : 
The Devil grew^ well, the Devil a monk was he ! " 

15 It is amazing how little effect physical suffering or local cir- 
cumstances have upon the mind, except while we are subject to 
their immediate influence. While the impression lasts, they are 
every thing : when it is gone, they are nothing. We toss and 
tumble about in a sick bed ; we lie on our right side, we then 

20 change to the left ; we stretch ourselves on our backs, we turn 
on our faces ; we wrap ourselves up under the clothes to 
exclude the cold, we throw them off to escape the heat and 
suffocation ; we grasp the pillow in agony, we fling ourselves 
out of bed, we walk up and down the room with hasty or feeble 

25 steps ; we return to bed ; we are worn out with fatigue and 
pain, yet can get no repose for the one, nor intermission for 
the other ; we summon all our patience, or give vent to passion 
and petty rage : nothing avails ; we seem wedded to our dis- 
ease, " like life and death in disproportion met ; " we make new 

30 efforts, try new expedients, but nothing appears to shake it off, 
or promise relief from our grim foe : it infixes its sharp sting 
into us, or overpowers us by its sickly and stunning weight : 
every moment is as much as we can bear, and yet there seems 



THE SICK CHAMBER 311 

no end of our lengthening tortures ; we are ready to faint with 
exhaustion, or work ourselves up to frenzy : we " trouble deaf 
Heaven with our bootless prayers : " we think our last hour 
has come, or peevishly wish it were, to put an end to the 
scene ; we ask questions as to the origin of evil and the ne- 5 
cessity of pain ; we " moralise our complaints into a thousand 
similes ; " we deny the use of medicine in toto, we have a full 
persuasion that all doctors are mad or knaves, that our object 
is to gain relief, and theirs (out of the perversity of human 
nature, or to seem wiser than we) to prevent it; we catechise 10 
the apothecary, rail at the nurse, and cannot so much as con- 
ceive the possibility that this state of things should not last 
for ever ; we are even angry at those who would give us 
encouragement, as if they would make dupes or children of 
us ; we might seek a release by poison, a halter, or the sword, 1 5 
but we have not strength of mind enough — our nerves are 
too shaken — to attempt even this poor revenge — when lo ! 
a change comes, the spell falls off, and the next moment we 
forget all that has happened to us. No sooner does our dis- 
order turn its back upon us than we laugh at it. The state 20 
we have been in, sounds like a dream, a fable ; health is the 
order of the day, strength is ours de jure and de facto ; and we 
discard all uncalled-for evidence to the contrary with a smile of 
contemptuous incredulity, just as we throw our physic-bottles 
out of the window ! I see (as I awake from a short, uneasy 25 
doze) a golden light shine through the white window-curtains 
on the opposite wall : — is it the dawn of a new day, or the 
departing light of evening ? I do not well know, for the opium 
" they have drugged my posset with " has made strange havoc 
with my brain, and I am uncertain whether time has stood still, 30 
or advanced, or gone backward. By " puzzling o'er the doubt," 
my attention is drawn a little out of myself to external objects ; 
and I consider whether it would not administer some relief to my 
monotonous languor, if I call up a vivid picture of an evening 



312 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLI^T 

sky I witnessed a short while before, the white fleecy clouds, 
the azure vault, the verdant fields, and balmy air. In vain! The 
wings of fancy refuse to mount from my bed-side. The air with- 
out has nothing in common with the closeness within ; the clouds 
5 disappear, the sky is instantly overcast and black. I walk out 
in this scene soon after I recover ; and with those favourite and 
well-kno!vn objects interposed, can no longer recall the tumbled 
pillow, the juleps or the labels, or the unwholesome dungeon in 
which I was before immured. What is contrary to our present 

lo sensations or settled habits, amalgamates indifferently with our 
belief : the imagination rules over imaginary themes ; the senses 
and custom have a narrower sway, and admit but one guest at 
a time. It is hardly to be wondered at that we dread physical 
calamities so little beforehand : we think no more of them the 

15 moment after they have happened. Out of sight, out of mind. 
This will perhaps explain why all actual punishment has so little 
effect ; it is a state contrary to nature, alien to the will. If it 
does not touch honour and conscience (and where these are not, 
how can it touch them ?) it goes for nothing ; and where these 

20 are, it rather sears and hardens them. The gyves, the cell, the 
meagre fare, the hard labour are abhorrent to the mind of the 
culprit on whom they are imposed, who carries the love of liberty 
or indulgence to licentiousness ; and who throws the thought of 
them behind him (the moment he can evade the penalty,) with 

25 scorn and laughter, 

" Like Samson his green wythes." ^ 

So, in travelling, we often meet with great fatigue and incon- 
venience from heat or cold, or other accidents, and resolve never 
to go a journey again ; but we are ready to set off on a new 

1 The thoughts of a captive can no more get beyond his prison-walls than his 
limbs, unless they are busied in planning an escape ; as, on the contrary, what 
prisoner, after effecting his escape, ever suffered them to return there, or took 
common precautions to prevent his own ? We indulge our fancy more than we 
consult our interest. The sense of personal identity has almost as little influence 
in practice as it has foundation in theory. 



THE SICK CHAMBER 313 

excursion to-morrow. We remember the landscape, the change 
of scene, the romantic expectation, and think no more of the 
heat, the noise, and dust. The body forgets its grievances, till 
they recur ; but imagination, passion, pride, have a longer mem- 
ory and quicker apprehensions. To the first the pleasure or 5 
pain is nothing when once over ; to the last it is only then that 
they begin to exist. The line in Metastasio, 

" The worst of every evil is the fear," 

is true only when applied to this latter sort. — It is curious that, 
on coming out of a sick-room, where one has been pent some 10 
time, and grown weak and nervous, and looking at Nature for 
the first time, the objects that present themselves have a very 
questionable and spectral appearance, the people in the street 
resemble flies crawling about, and seem scarce half-alive. It is 
we who are just risen from a torpid and unwholesome state, 15 
and who impart our imperfect feelings of existence, health, and 
motion to others. Or it may be that the violence and exertion 
of the pain we have gone through make common everyday 
objects seem unreal and unsubstantial. It is not till we have 
established ourselves in form in the sitting-room, wheeled round 20 
the arm-chair to the fire (for this makes part of our re-intro- 
duction to the ordinary modes of being in all seasons,) felt our 
appetite return, and taken up a book, that we can be con- 
sidered as at all restored to ourselves. And even then our 
first sensations are rather empirical than positive, as after sleep 25 
we stretch out our hands to know whether we are awake. This 
is the time for reading. Books are then indeed " a world, both 
pure and good," into which we enter with all our hearts, after 
our revival from illness and respite from the tomb, as with the 
freshness and novelty of youth. They are not merely acceptable 30 
as without too much exertion they pass the time and relieve 
ennui ; but from a certain suspension and deadening of the 
passions, and abstraction from worldly pursuits, they may be 



314 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

said to bring back and be friendly to the guileless and enthusi- 
astic tone of feeling with which we formerly read them. Sick- 
ness has weaned us pro tempore from contest and cabal ; and 
we are fain to be docile and children again. All strong changes 
5 in our present pursuits throw us back upon the past. This is 
the shortest and most complete emancipation from our late dis- 
comfiture. We wonder that any one who has read The History 
of a Foundling should labour under an indigestion, nor do we 
comprehend how a perusal of the Faery Queen should not ensure 

lo the true believer an uninterrupted succession of halcyon days. 
Present objects bear a retrospective meaning, and point to " a 
foregone conclusion." Returning back to life with half -strung 
nerves and shattered strength, we seem as when we first entered 
it with uncertain purposes and faltering aims. The machine has 

1 5 received a shock, and it moves on more tremulously than before, 
and not all at once in the beaten track. Startled at the approach 
of death, we are willing to get as far from it as we can by 
making a proxy of our former selves ; and finding the precarious 
tenure by which we hold existence, and its last sands running 

2o out, we gather up and make the most of the fragments that 
memory has stored up for us. Every thing is seen through a 
medium of reflection and contrast. We hear the sound of merry 
voices in the street ; and this carries us back to the recollections 
of some country-town or village-group — 

25 " We see the children sporting on the shore, 

And hear the mighty waters roaring evermore." 

A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we are reminded of Christ- 
mas gambols long ago. The very cries in the street seem to be 
of a former date ; and the dry toast eats very much as it did 
30 — twenty years ago. A rose smells doubly sweet, after being 
stifled with tinctures and essences ; and we enjoy the idea of 
a journey and an inn the more for having been bed-rid. But 
a book is the secret and sure charm to bring all these implied 



THE SICK CHAMBER 315 

associations to a focus. I should prefer an old one, Mr. Lamb's 
favourite, ih^ Jaur/iey to Lisbon; or the Decameron^ if I could 
get it ; but if a new one, let it be Paul Clifford. That book 
has the singular advantage of being written by a gentleman, 
and not about his own class. The characters he commemorates 5 
are every moment at fault between life and death, hunger and 
2i forced loan on the public ; and therefore the interest they take 
in themselves, and which we take in them, has no cant or affec- 
tation in it, but is " lively, audible, and full of vent." A set of 
well-dressed gentlemen, picking their teeth with a graceful air 10 
after dinner, and endeavouring to keep their cravats from the 
slightest discomposure, and saying the most insipid things in 
the most insipid manner, do not make a sceiie. Well, then, I 
have got the new paraphrase on the Beggar^s Opera, am fairly 
embarked in it ; and at the end of the first volume, where I am 1 5 
galloping across the heath with the three highwaymen, while the 
moon is shining full upon them, feel my nerves so braced, 
and my spirits so exhilarated, that, to say truth, I am scarce 
sorry for the occasion that has thrown me upon the work and 
the author — have quite forgot my Sick Room and am more 20 
than half ready to recant the doctrine that a Free-Admission to 

the theatre is 

"The true pathos and sublime 

Of human life : " 

for I feel as I read that if the stage shows us the masks of 25 
men and the pageant of the world, books let us into their souls 
and lay open to us the secrets of our own. They are the first 
and last, the most home-felt, the most heart-felt of all our 
enjoyments. 



NOTES 



The only complete edition of Hazlitt's writings is by Waller and Glover in 
thirteen volumes, including one volume which contains a full index to subjects 
and quotations. References in these notes to " Works " are always to this edition. 
The instances of my indebtedness to this edition are too numerous to mention. 
Hazlitt's habit of quoting from memory has baffled every editor who has tried 
to discover the sources of the quotations. Though scholars have been able to 
discover most of those used in this volume, a few have eluded the most careful 
search of many editors. 

HAMLET 

The only criticism of Hamlet by Hazlitt is the review of Kean's play- 
ing, which appeared in the Morning Chronicle, March 14, 1814. The 
present issue is printed from the first edition of the " Characters of 
Shakespear" {1817), which is a reprint, usually with small changes, of 
the theatrical reviews appearing immediately after the performance 
of the plays. 

In his preface to the published volume, "Characters of Shakespear," 
Hazlitt says : " The only work which seemed to supersede the necessity 
of an attempt like the present was Schlegel's very admirable ' Lectures 
on the Drama,' which give by far the best account of the plays of Shak- 
spere that has hitherto appeared. The only circumstances in which 
it was thought not impossible to improve on the manner in which the 
German critic has executed this part of his design, were in avoiding an 
appearance of mysticism in his style, not very attractive to the English 
reader, and in bringing illustrations from particular passages of the plays 
themselves, of which Schlegel's work, from the extensiveness of his plan, 
did not admit. We will at the same time confess, that some little jeal- 
ousy of the character of the national understanding was not without its 
share in producing the following undertaking, for "we were piqued' 
that it should be reserved for a foreign critic to give ' reasons for the 
faith which we English have in Shakespear.' " Then Hazlitt printed a 
long passage from Schlegel and contrasted his estimate of Shakspere 
with that of Samuel Johnson, much to the disadvantage of the latter. 

317 



3l8 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

1 3 that famous soliloquy: III, i, 56. 
1 4 the advice to the players : III, ii. 
14 " this goodly frame " : II, ii, 310. 
1 7 " man delighted not" : II, ii, 321. 
1 9 grave-diggers : V, i. 

1 23 "too much i' th' sun" : I, ii, 67. 

2 2" the pangs of despised love " : III, i, 72. 

3 10 " we have that within " : I, ii, 85. 
3 27 where he kills Polonius : III, iv. 

3 28 alters the letters : IV, vi; V, ii, 51. 

3 33 refuses to kill : III, iv ; also " He kneels and prays." 

4 21 "How all occasions " : IV, iv, 32. 

5 33 the Whole Duty of Man was a treatise published in 1659. The 
author is unknown. It was very popular, one impression of 17 17 
appearing with the alluring title " The Whole Duty of Man, consider'd 
under its three principal and general divisions, namely The Duties we 
owe to God, Ourselves and Neighbors, Faithfully extracted from that 
excellent book so entitled and published for the benefit of the poorer 
sort." The book has been attributed to Robert Nelson, Esq., to Robert 
Norton, Henry Hammond, and others. It will be remembered as one of 
that interesting collection of books of Lydia Languish, in Sheridan's 
" Rivals," I, 2. 

5 33 Academy of Compliments or the Whole Art of Courtship, being 
the nearest and most exact way of wooing a Maid or Widow, by the 
way of Dialogue or Complimental Expressions. London (no date). 
There were editions in 1640, 1650. 

6 21 "I loved Ophelia " : V, i, 292. 

6 26 " Sweets to the sweet " : V, i, 266. 

7 13 his advice to Laertes : I, iii. 
7 14 advice to the King : II, ii. 

7 28 Kemble: John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), the celebrated English 
tragedian, son of Roger Kemble, brother of Charles Kemble and of 
Mrs. Sarah Kemble Siddons. He made his debut as Hamlet at Drury 
Lane in 1783 and retired as Coriolanus, June 23, 1817. As manager of 
Drury Lane and later of Covent Garden he won a reputation, particu- 
larly at the opening of the new Covent Garden Theater when the "old 
price riots " occurred. Kemble was popular as Hamlet, Cato, and Brutus, 
but especially as Coriolanus. Hazlitt described with feeling and with 
regret Kemble's retirement from the stage in the Times for June 25, 
1817. For many criticisms of his acting, see Works, Vol. VIII. 

7 note "There is a willow" : IV, vii, 167. 



NOTES 319 

8 6 Kean: Edmund Kean (1787-1833), a celebrated English actor. 
He first appeared at the Haymarket Theater in 1806, later at Drury 
Lane, where he scored a phenomenal success as Shylock. His initial 
appearance in New York was on November 29, 1820. Kean was one 
of the objects of Hazlitt's sincere and constant admiration. The parts 
which he played with exceptional brilliancy, such as Shylock, Lear, 
Hamlet, Othello, lago, Macbeth, Romeo, Sir Giles Overreach, have 
been described vividly and sympathetically by Hazlitt in "View of the 
English Stage," Works, VIII, 179 ff. 

ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 

This was the fifth lecture of the series at the Surrey Institution. It 
was published in 1819. See Introduction, p. xxxi. 

9 " proper study of mankind " : Pope, " Essay on Man," Epistle II, 1. 2. 
9 7" comes home to the business " : " I do not publish my Essays, which 

of all my other works have been most current ; for that, as it seems, 
they come home to men's business and bosoms " (from the '* Dedica- 
tion to the Duke of Buckingham," by Francis Bacon). 

9 7 Quicquid agunt: Juvenal, " Satires," I, 85-86. This was also the 
motto of the first forty numbers of the " Tatler." It was translated 
thus by Hazlitt : " Whatever things are doing shall gei-m the motley 
subject of my page." 

9 16 " holds the mirror up to nature " : " Hamlet," III, ii, 24. 

9 23 '" The act and practic part of life" : " Henry V," I, i, 51. 

10 6 "the web of our life": ''All's Well," IV, iii, 79. This was a 
favorite passage with Hazlitt and was often used by him. 

10 16 "Quid sit": Horace, "Epistles," I, ii, 3, 4. "It tells what is 
honourable, what is loose, what is expedient, what not, more amply and 
better than Chrysippus and Grantor." 

10 22 Montaigne (Michael de Montaigne, 1 533-1 592): His " Essais " 
were published in 1 580-1 588. Charles Cotton's translation (mentioned 
on page 13) was published in three volumes in 1685 and has been often 
reprinted, once by W. C. Hazlitt (1902). Florio's translation (published 
in 1 601) was known to Shakspere and to Bacon. 

11 31 " pour out all as plain " : Pope, " Imitation of the Second Book 

of the Satires of Horace," Sat. I, 51-52. 

" I love to pour out all myself, as plain 
As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne." 

11 32 Shippen (i 673-1 743) : William Shippen was an outspoken poli- 
tician and a Jacobite, Who was sent to the Tower in 17 18. He used to 



320 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

say of himself and Sir Robert Walpole : " Robin and I are two honest 
men, though he is for King George and I for King James." Of him, 
Hazhtt in his " British Senate " writes : " He was one of the most vehe- 
ment and vigorous opposers of the measures of government through 
the whole of this reign. . . . But he was a man of great firmness and 
independence of mind." 

12 23 " Pereant isti " : " confound the fellows who have said our good 
things before us" (Hazlitt). 

12 note Mandevillo: liernard de Mandevillc (1G70-1733); in 1705 he 
published a rough poem in octosyllabics, entitled " The Grumbling 
Hive." This was reprinted in 17 14 together with a long commentary in 
prose, with the title "The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public 
Benefits." 

13 3 Lord Halifax: George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695); 
he has been sometimes called the founder of the political pamphlet. 
His style was simple and full of wit. His collected pamphlets appeared 
in 1700 and are interesting. 

13 7 Cowley: Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), a royalist poet and one 
of the first writers of the English essay. 

13 8 Sir William Temple (162S-1699) : distinguished statesman and 
prose writer. He was for a time a patron of Swift. 

13 9 Lord Shaftesbury: Antony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftes- 
bury (1671-1713) ; he published a book which became very famous and 
had much influence on the thought of the eighteenth century, " Char- 
acteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times " (1711). He was eminent 
as a philosophical essayist. Pie was opposed to Hobbes and maintained 
the existence of a moral sense. 

13 note "Nam quodcunque " &c. : Lucretius, III, 752. 

14 (> theTatler: this famous paper, instituted by Richard Steele, con- 
tinued from April 12, 1709, to January 2, 17 11. In all there were 271 
numbers, of which Steele contributed 1S8. See the editions of Steele 
and Addison in the Athenaeum Press Series. See also the edition of 
the "Tatler" by G. A. Aitken (1S89). 

14 7 Spectator continued from March i, 1711, to December 6, 1712, 
and from June 18, 1714, to December 20, 1714. The larger number of 
papers were written by Addison. 

14 12 " the perfect spy 0' th' time " : "' Macbeth," III, i, 129. 

14 18 The first of these papers : a large part of this passage had 
appeared in the lixamiiter (March 5, 181 5). It was then reprinted 
in "The Round Table" (1817) and was later included in the essay 
before us. 



NOTES ~ 321 

14 2(i Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.: in starting the "Tatler," Steele assumed 
the name of the astrologer, Isaac Bickerstaff, rendered famous by Swift, 
who professed that Bickerstaff was a true astrologer, disgusted at the 
lies told by impostors. See Swift's " Predictions for the Year, 1708." 

14 o2 Temple Bar : the famous gateway before the Temple in Lon- 
don, which formerly divided Fleet Street from the Strand. 

15 y he dwells with a secret satisfaction : " Tatler," No. 107, Decem- 
ber 14, 1709. 

15 U The club at the Trumpet: "Tatler," No. 132, where the club 
is described. 

The Trumpet stood about half-way up Shire Lane, between Temple Bar and 
Carey Street, at the widest and best part of the lane, and remained almost entirely 
in its original state until demolished to make way for the new Law Courts. It had 
the old sign of the Trumpet to the last, as it figured in Limbard's " Mirror '■ in a 
picture where it is placed side by side with a view of the house in Fulwood's 
Rents where papers for the " Spectator " were taken in. 

Aitken's edition of " Tatler," III, 9S-99. 

15 10 cavalcade of the justice, &c. : " Tatler," No. 86, October 26, 
1709. 

15 20 the upholsterer and his companions : " Tatler," Nos. 1 55, 160, 17S. 
The original of this political upholsterer was said to have been Edward 
Arne of Covent Garden. 

15 21 Green Park : a large park in London between Buckingham 
Palace and Piccadilly. It was especially popular in the eighteenth 
century. 

15 28 burlesque copy of verses : " Tatler," No. 238, October 16, 1710. 
Swift writes (Journal, October 10, 1710) : "I am now writing my poet- 
ical description of a ' Shower in London ' and will send it to the 
' Tatler.' " 

15 31 the Grecian coffee-house: probably the most ancient of the 
coffee-houses. It goes back to about 1652. It stood in Devereu.x Court 
and had its name from a Greek, Constantine, who kept it. 

In the "Tatler" announcements of all accounts of learning were "to 
be under the title of the Grecian " ; see also " Tatler," No. 6. " While 
other parts of the town are amused with the present actions [of the 
Duke of Marlborough] we generally spend the evening at this table 
[the Grecian] in inquiry into antiquity, and think anything new which 
gives us new knowledge." In Dr. King's " Anecdotes " there is a story 
of two gentlemen friends who disputed there " about the account of a 
Greek word to such a length that they went out into Devereux Court 
and drew swords, when one of them was killed on the spot." 



322 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

15 32 Wills' : the coffee-house on the north side of Russell Street, 
Covent Garden, at the end of Bow Street. It was named for its first 
proprietor, William Urwin. In the seventeenth century it became the 
chief resort of the poets and came to be known as the wiis^ coffee- 
house. See Pepys's "Diary," February, 1663-1664. 

16 7 Mr. Lilly: for "Spectator," No. 138, August 8, 1711, Steele 
wrote the following advertisement : " The exercise of the snuff-box ac- 
cording to the most fashionable airs and notions, in opposition to the 
exercise of the fan, will be taught with the best plain or perfumed snuff 
at Charles Lillie's, perfumer, at the Corner of Beaufort Buildings in the 
Strand." 

16 8 Betterton : Thomas Betterton (1635-1710), famous as actor and 
theater manager. He is often mentioned in the " Tatler," e.g. Nos. i, 
71, 167. See Aitken's edition, II, 163-164. 

16 8 Mrs. Oldfield: Anne Oldfield (1683-1730), a celebrated actress. 
According to tradition, Farquhar, the dramatist, heard her in the Mitre 
Tavern reciting passages from Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. He spoke 
favorably of her to Vanbrugh, who in turn presented her to Christopher 
Rich, manager of Drury Lane. 

16 9 Will Estcourt : Richard Estcourt (1668-1712), actor and dramatist. 
See " Spectator," No. 468, August 27, 17 12. 

16 10 Tom Durfey : Thomas D'Urfey (1653-17 23), dramatist and song 
writer, often referred to in the "Tatler," e.g. Nos. i, 11, 43, &c. He 
wrote "The Modern Prophets," which was produced in 1709. At his 
death he left his watch and chain to Steele, who wore it at the funeral. 

16 11 Duke of Marlborough : John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough 
(1650-1722), the distinguished general in the War of the Spanish Suc- 
cession. Thackeray has given a vivid, perhaps not a fair, picture of him 
in " Henry Esmond." 

16 11 Marshal Turenne (1611-1675) : created Marshal-General of the 
armies of France in 1660; he won many brilliant victories. 

16 12 Vanbrugh: Sir John Vanbrugh (1664 or 1666-1726), a promi- 
nent dramatist and architect of the time of the Restoration. One of his 
most famous buildings was Blenheim near Oxford, given by the Crown 
to the Duke of Marlborough. 

16 27 "The first sprightly runnings" : Dryden, " Aurengzebe," IV, i : 

And from the dregs of life think to receive, 
What the first sprightly running could not give. 

17 18 amiable weaknesses : " Spectator," No. 100, June 25, 17 11. 
17 18 hospitality: "Spectator," Nos. 106, 107, July 2, 3, 1711. 



NOTES 323 

17 21 passion for his fair enemy : " Spectator," No. 113, July 10, 171 1. 
17 25 the havoc he makes among the game: "Spectator," No. 116, 
July 13, 171 1. 

17 26 speech from the bench: " Spectator," No. 122, July 20, 171 1. 

17 28 put up as a sign-post : ibid. 

17 30 baggage of a gipsy : " Spectatoi-," No. 120, July 30, 17 11. 

17 32 witchcraft: " Spectator," No. 117, July 14, 171 1. 

17 33 account of the family pictures : " Spectator," No. 109, July 5, 171 1. 

17 34 to his falling asleep at church: "Spectator," No. 112, July g, 
17 1 1. John Williams should be John Matthews. " I was yesterday very 
much surprised to hear my old Friend in the midst of the Service 
calling out to one John Matthews to mind what he was about and not 
disturb the Congregation." 

18 2 Will. Wimble: "Spectator," Nos. 108, 119, 126, 131. 

18 2 Will. Honeycomb: "Spectator," Nos. 105, 131, 151, 156. 

18 21 the Court of Honour: " Tatler," No. 250, November 13, 1710. 

18 22 Personification of Musical Instruments : " Spectator," Nos. 1 53, 
157- 

18 24 the family of an old college acquaintance : " Tatler," No. 95. 

18 29 Guy of Warwick : an English metrical romance, perhaps of 
Saxon origin, known to have existed in French as early as the thirteenth 
century. 

18 29 Seven Champions : a fantastic narrative of the seven saints of 
seven countries — St. George for England, St. Denis for France, St. James 
for Spain, St. Anthony for Italy, St. Andrew for Scotland, St. Patrick 
for Ireland, St. David for Wales. See W. II. Schofield, " English 
Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer," p. 318. 

18 31 account of the two sisters : "Tatler," No. 104, December 7, 1709. 

18 33 that of the married lady : " Tatler," No. 82, October 17, 1709. 

19 7 the lover and his mistress: "Tatler," No. 94, November 14, 1709. 
19 9 the story of Mr. Eustace : " Tatler," No. 172, May 15, 17 10. 

19 10 the fine dream : " Tatler," No. 117, January 6, 1710. 

19 20 Westminster Abbey: " Spectator," No. 26, March 30, 17 10. 

19 20 Royal Exchange : " Spectator," No. 69, May 19, 17 10. 

19 27 Cartoons of Raphael : " Spectator," No. 226, November 19, 171 1. 
The " cartoons " were prepared by Raphael for the tapestries of the 
Sistine Chapel at Rome. They are now in the Kensington Museum, 
London. 

19 28 Mr. Fuseli : Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), Swiss-English painter 
and art critic. He established himself in England in 1779, and in 1799 
was elected professor of painting in the Royal Academy. 



324 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

20 5 original copy of the quarto edition of the Tatler: the "Tatler" was 
reissued in 8vo, and in i2mo in 1710-1711. 

20 8 Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727): the greatest of natural philos- 
ophers. 

20 10 Herald's College : College of Arms, an ancient royal corporation 
instituted by Richard III in 1483. "' liehind Little Knight-Rider Street, 
to the east of Doctors' Commons, is the Herald's College " (Leigh 
Hunt, " The Town," chap. ii. This book contains an interesting 
account of the place). 

20 12 The Guardian: continued from March 12, 17 13, to October i, 
1 7 13. Of the 176 numbers Steele wrote 82 and Addison 53. 

20 1() the Rambler: a series of papers in imitation of the "Spec- 
tator," appearing every Tuesday and Saturday from March 20, 1750, to 
March 14, 1752. All the papers except five were written by Samuel 
Johnson. 

22 17 "The elephant" : " Paradise Lost," IV, 345. 

23 10 "If he were to write a fable": "Boswell" (edited by Hill), II, 231. 

24 7 Rasselas (1759) : Johnson's most popular work. It is the story 
of the wanderings of the Prince of Abyssinia in search of happiness. 

24 12 patronised Lauder : " Boswell," II, 22S-231 : 

The Rev. Dr. Douglas, having, with uncommon acuteness, clearly detected 
a gross forgery and imposition upon the public by William Lauder, a Scotch 
schoolmaster, who had with equal impudence and ingenuity represented Milton 
as a plagiary from certain modem Latin poets, Johnson, who had been so far 
imposed upon as to furnish a Preface and a Postscript to his work, now dictated 
a letter for Lauder, addressed to Dr. Douglas, acknowledging his fraud in terms 
of suitable contrition. Lauder afterwards went to the Barbadoes, where he died 
very miserably about the year 1771. 

24 20 "the king of good fellows " : 

There 's auld Rob Morris that wons in yon glen 

He 's the King of gude fellows and wale [pick] of auld men. 

Burns, "Auld Rob Morris," 1. 2 

24 28 "the Ebro's temper": no one seems to understand where Hazlitt 
secured this expression. Mr. Gollancz, in his edition of Ilazlitt's " Wit 
and Humour," asks the question whether this may be a very inaccurate 
misquoting of the line in " Othello," V, ii, 252 : 

It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook's temper. 

25 1 " Does he wind into a subject " : " Boswell," II, 260. 
25 o " If that fellow " : Burke. Ibid. 11,450. 

25 (i Topham Beauclerc and Langton : ibid. I, 250. 



NOTES 325 

25 20 Now I think I am a good-humoured fellow : ibid. II, 362. 

25 22 his quitting the society of Garrick : ibid. I, 201. 

25 23 dining with Wilkes : ibid. Ill, 64. 

25 24 sitting with the young ladies : ibid. II, 120. 

25 27 his carrying the unfortunate victim : Sergeant Talfourd, in his 
account of the lectures by Hazlitt, wrote : 

The comparative insensibility of the bulk of his audience to his finest passages 
sometimes provoked him to awaken their attention by points which broke the 
train of his discourse, after which he could make himself amends by some abrupt 
paradox which might set their prejudices on edge, and make them fancy they 
were shocked. . . . He once had an edifying advantage over them. He was 
enumerating the humanities which endeared Dr. Johnson to his mind, and, at 
the close of an agreeable catalogue, mentioned, as last and noblest, " his carrying 
the poor victim of disease and dissipation on his back through Fleet Street," at 
which a titter arose from some, who were struck by the picture as ludicrous, and 
a murmur from others, who deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite. He paused 
for an instant, and then added in his steadiest and most impressive manner, " an 
act which realizes the parable of the Good Samaritan," at which his moral and 
delicate hearers shrank rebuked into deep silence. 

" Literary Remains of William Hazlitt," pp. cxxviii-cxxix 

26 7 "where they in trembling hope repose": Gray's "Elegy, The 
Epitaph." 

26 13 The Adventurer : November 7, 1752, to March 9, 1754, by John 
Hawkesworth (1715-1773). 

26 1(> The World: January 4, 1752, to March 9, 1754, by Edward Moore 
(1712-1757) in collaboration with Lyttleton, Chesterfield, and Horace 
Walpole. 

26 17 Connoisseur: January 31, 1754, to September 30, 1756; begun 
by George Colman and Bonnell Thornton. It contained William Cow- 
per's first poetry. The statement, " in the last of these there is one good 
idea," refers to a paper by Moore in the World, No. 176. 

26 23 Citizen of the World (1762): the title given to a collection of 
papers first published as " Chinese Letters." 

26 24 "go about to cozen reputation": "Merchant of Venice," II, 

' "^ ' for who shall go about 

To cozen fortune and be honourable 
Without the stamp of merit ? 

26 27 Persian Letters (1735) : " Letters from a Persian in England to 
his friend at Ispahan," by Eord Lyttleton (1709-1773). 

27 4 "The bonzes and priests" : " Citizen of the World," Letter X. 
27 21 We are positive when we say: ibid. Letter V. 

27 2.5 Beau Tibbs : ibid. Letters XXIX, LIV, LV, LXXI. 



326 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

27 29 Lounger: Editiburgh, January 23, 1779, to May 27, 1780. 
27 30 Mirror: Edinburgh, February 5, 1785, to January 6, 1786. Henry 
Mackenzie (1745-1831) was the chief contributor to both. 
27 32 La Roche : in the Minvr, Nos. 42, 43, 44. 

27 33 Le Fevre : Le Fever in Sterne's " Tristram Shandy," VI, 6. 

28 1^ Man of the World (1773), Julia de Roubigne (1777), Man of Feel- 
ing (1771) : all by Henry Mackenzie. 

28 4 Rosamond Gray : romance by Charles Lamb in 1798. 

CHARACTER OF MR. BURKE 

This essay appeared originally as a part of the paper, " Coleridge's 
Literary Life," Edinburgh Revie^v, XXVHI, 503, August, 1817. It ap- 
peared on the fifth of the following October in the Champion under 
the title "Character of Mr. Burke." In 1819 it was published in the 
volume, " Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters." The 
text of 1819 is here reprinted. 

Edmund Burke (1729-1797): the celebrated English orator and states- 
man. Hazlitt's relation to Burke is interesting as well as very char- 
acteristic. When he was eighteen years of age (1796), he found on 
one of his rambles a copy of St. Jameses Ch7-onicle, which contained a 
long extract from Burke's famous " Letter to a Noble Lord." It was 
the first time that Hazlitt had read a line of Burke's. To find such 
wonderful language, such splendid imagination, appealed inexpressibly 
to the young reader, but at the same time filled him with despair that he 
should find so difficult the task of conveying to others the slightest con- 
ception of his meaning. Later he picked up in a Shrewsbury book- 
shop Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790) and 
wrote of it with enthusiasm. Throughout his life he retained a sincere 
admiration for Burke's writings, but roundly criticized his position on 
public questions and decried him as an enemy of the people. See also 
another paper, Works, III, 325. 

The views expressed in this essay should be compared with the 
admirable short biography of Burke by Lord Morley in the English Men 
of Letters Series. 

32 18 speech on the Begum's afiairs : on Burke's attitude toward Indian 
affairs and Warren Hastings, see Morley, chap. vii. 

32 28 the word abdication: "the second claim of the Revolution So- 
ciety is a ' right of cashiering their governors for misconduct.' Perhaps 
the apprehensions our ancestors entertained of forming such a precedent 
as that ' of cashiering for misconduct' was the cause that the declaration 



NOTES 327 

of the act, which impHed the abdication of King James, was, if it had 
any fault, rather too guarded and too circumstantial" (Burke, "Reflec- 
tions on the Revolution in France " (edited by Payne), II, 31). 

33 3 Salvator Rosa (161 5-1673): a celebrated Neapolitan painter. 
It is said that he learned from the Italian banditti many incidents which 
he afterwards painted. He is thought to have been a member of a com- 
pany formed for the purpose of waylaying and killing Spaniards. 

34 7 "Never so sure": Pope, "Moral Essays," II, 51. On his 
speeches on the American War, see Morley, chaps, iv, viii, ix. 

ON POETRY IN GENERAL 

This was introductory to the series, " Lectures on the English Poets," 
delivered at the Surrey Institution and published the same year (1818). 
The present text is a reprint of the second edition (1819). 

35 24 " spreads its sweet leaves " : " Romeo and Juliet," I, i, 138. 

36 8 "the stuff of which " : " Tempest," IV, i, 156. 

36 9 "mere oblivion" : "As You Like It," II, vii, 165. 

36 14 " man's life is poor as beast's " : " King Lear," II, iv, 263. 

36 17 Moli&re : the stage name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622- 
1673), *^he greatest writer of French comedies. " Le Bourgeois Gentil- 
homme " (1670) was one of the most popular of Moliere's plays, "a 
lesson of good sense to those who suffer from the social ambition to 
rise above their proper rank." 

36 23 the Lord-Mayor's show : for an account of this interesting an- 
nual London carnival, see F. W. Fairholt's " Lord Mayor's Pageants," or 
the short sketch by Eric Erood, " The Lord Mayor's Show," 1896. 

37 1 "the lunatic, the lover": "Midsummer Night's Dream," V, 
i, 7 ff. It will be observed that Hazlitt has here, as usually, trusted to 
his not very accurate memory. 

37 1(> Ariosto : Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533), the celebrated Italian 
poet, author of " Orlando Furioso." He began to write his great poem 
about 1503, and published it in 1516 in forty cantos (extended after- 
wards to forty-six). Up to the moment of his death he never ceased to 
correct and improve both the subject and the style. The first com- 
plete edition of the poem was published at Ferrara in 1532. 

37 19 Achilles : the central figure in the Iliad of Homer, which chiefly 
tells of the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, leader of the 
Greek warriors. " In Achilles, Homer summed up and fixed forever 
the ideal of the Greek character" (Symonds, " Studies of the Greek 
Poets," I, 20). 



328 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

37 20 Plato : " The Republic," Book X. 

37 o'l "which ecstasy is very cunning in" : " Hamlet," III, iv, 138. 

38 1*J Lord Bacon : " The Advancement of Learning," Book II, 
chap, iv, sect. 2 ff. 

39 1 " Our eyes are made the fools " : " Macbeth," II, i, 44. 

39 3 " That if it would " : " Midsummer Night's Dream," V, i, 19 ff. 
39 8 " The flame 0' th' taper " : " Cymbeline," II, ii, 19. 

39 2ii " for they are old like him " : " King Lear," II, iv, 291. 

40 11 When Lear says of Edgar : ibid. Ill, iv, 68. 

40 18 " The little dogs and all " : " King Lear," III, vi, 60. 

40 25 " So I am " : " King Lear," IV, vii, 70. 

40 31 " Oh now, for ever " : " Othello," III, iii, 347 ff. 

41 10 "Never, lago " : ibid. Ill, iii, 453 ff. 

41 20 " But there where I have garner'd " : ibid. IV, ii, 57. 

42 8 tragedies of Moore and Lillo : Edward Moore (1712-1757), dram- 
atist and writer of fables. He was the author of "The Gamester" 
(1753), supposed to be the strongest lesson against gambling ever 
preached from stage or pulpit. With Lyttleton, Chesterfield, and 
Horace Walpole, Moore edited the IVbrld from 1753 to 1757. George 
Lillo { 1 693-1 739) was also a dramatist. He wrote seven plays in the 
line of what was known as the "domestic drama." The influence of his 
most popular play, " The London Merchant or The History of George 
Barnwell" (1731), was considerable. 

42 18 As Mr. Burke observes : " Sublime and Beautiful," Part I, 
sect. XV : 

Choose a day on which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy 
we have ; appoint the most favourite actors ; spare no cost upon the scenes and 
decorations ; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music ; and when 
you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are erect 
with expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal of high rank is on the 
point of being executed in the adjoining square ; in a moment the emptiness of 
the theatre would demonstrate the comparative weakness of the imitative arts, 
and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy. 

43 8 " Masterless passion" : " Merchant of Venice," IV, i, 50-51. In 
Shakspere the lines are : 

for affection, 
Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood 
Of what it likes or loathes. 

43 27 " Now night descending " : Pope, " Dunciad," I, 89-90. 

43 30 " Throw him on the steep " : Collins, " Ode to Fear," 11. 14-15. 



NOTES 329 

43 33 " Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted " : " King Lear," I, iv, 250 : 

Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, 

More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child 

Than the sea-monster. 

45 33 Jacob's Dream: see Genesis xxxv, 9-15. Hazlitt aspired to 
paint a picture on this subject symbolizing the development of society. 
Rembrandt was the great Dutch painter and etcher (i 607-1 669). 

46 2 Doctor Chalmers : Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), celebrated 
Scottish divine and author, professor of philosophy at St. Andrews and 
at Edinburgh. He wrote '" Discourses on Christian Revelation viewed 
in Connection with Modern Astronomy" (1S17), with the purpose of 
reconciling science with the conception of Christianity. See Hazlitt, 
" Spirit of the Age," Works, IV, 185. 

46 13 "our fell of hair " : " Macbeth," V, v, 11. 

46 15 Macbeth is only tolerated : probably this refers to music written 
for the play by Henry Purcell (1658-1695). He was a distinguished 
English musical composer, organist of Westminster from 1680, and 
famous for " Te Deum " and "Jubilate for St. Cecilia's Day, 1694." 

46 1!) the Beggar's Opera : by John Gay (1685-1732); produced at 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, January 29, 1728. It presented the people of the 
day — highwaymen, pickpockets, and all the corruption of contemporary 
politics. The play became very popular throughout the eighteenth and 
early nineteenth centuries and is the subject of a number of Hazlitt's 
theatrical reviews. See reviews of it in " The Round Table," Works, 
I, 65; in "View of English Stage," Works, VIII, 193, 254. 

46 23 "Obscurity her curtain round them drew": used again by 
Hazlitt in his essay "On the Ideal." From a poem "To the Honorable 
and Reverend F. C." in Dodsley's "Collection of Poems," VI (1758), 
138. The poem (anonymously published) was written by Sneyd Davies 
(1 709-1769) and was addressed to Frederick Cornwallis, afterwards 
Archbishop of Canterbury. See Gentlevian'' s Magazine, I, 174, and 
Nichols, " Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury," Vol. I. See also Works, XI, 570. 

47 9 " Between the acting " : " Julius Caesar," II, i, 63-69. 

48 12 "Thoughts that voluntary move " : " Paradise Lost," III, 37. 

48 17 "the words of Mercury " : " Love's Labor's Lost," V, ii, at close 
of play. 

The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. 

49 11 " the secret soul of harmony " : Milton, " L' Allegro," 1. 144 : 

The hidden soul of harmony. 



330 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

49 32 " the golden cadences of poetry " : " Love's Labor 's Lost," IV, 
ii, 127. 

50 3 " Sailing with supreme dominion " : Gray, " The Progress of 
Poesy," III, 3. 

50 13 The merchant, as described in Chaucer : Prologue to " Canter- 
bury Tales," 1. 275 : 

His resons spak he ful solempnely, 
Sowning alvvay th' encrees of his winning. 

50 15 Every prose-writer : this part of the subject is treated at large 
in Ilazlitt's essay, " On the Prose Style of Poets," Works, VII, 5. 

51 3 Addison's Campaign : the famous political poem written by 
Joseph Addison (1672-1716) in 1704 in honor of the Duke of Marl- 
borough to celebrate the victory at Blenheim. The poem is called a 
" Gazette in Rhyme " in Dr. Joseph Warton (1722-1800), "An Essay on 
the Writings and Genius of Pope" (1756), sect, v, pp. 267-268: 

Surely the regular march which the poet has observed from one town to 
another, as if he had been a commissary of the army, cannot well be excused. 

There is a passage in Boileau, so remarkably opposite to this fault of Addison, 
that one would almost be tempted to think he had the Campaign in his eye when 
he wrote it, if the time would admit it. 

" Loin ces rimeurs craintifs, dont I'esprit phlegmatique 
Garde dans ses fureurs un ordre didactique ; 
Qui chantent d'un heros les progres eclatans, 
Maigres Hisiorieiis, sitivroxt I' ordre dcs temps." 

Boileau, " L'Art Poetique," chap, ii 

51 25 His pilgrims walk above the earth : see Bunyan, " Pilgrim's 
Progress," at the end of Part I. 

51 31 "dewsof Castalie": Castalia was an ancient fountain on the slope 
of Mount Parnassus sacred to the Muses and Apollo. Both classical and 
modern poets frequently refer to it as a source of inspiration. 

51 33 Philoctetes : a legendary warrior of the Greeks who was 
wounded by a servant or accidentally by a poisoned arrow, and left to 
die on the island of Lemnos. Sophocles wrote a play about him. The 
speeches referred to by Hazlitt come near the close of the play. 

52 10 " As I walked about " : " Robinson Crusoe," Part I, chap. iii. 
52 24 Richardson's romances : Hazlitt refers to the works of the first 

English novelist, Samuel Richardson ( 1 689-1 761) —" Pamela" (1740), 
"Clarissa Harlowe" (1748), " Sir Charles Grandison " (1753)- 

52 .32 " give an echo to the seat " : " Twelfth Night," II, iv, 21. 

53 13 " Our poesy is as a gum " : " Timon of Athens," I, i, 20 ff. 



NOTES 331 

53 20 Ossian : or Oisin, a semihistorical Gaelic bard of the fourth cen- 
tury. To him was ascribed the authorship of the poems pubUshed by 
James Macpherson in 1760-1763. It is now commonly beUeved that 
Macpherson took great liberties with the originals, even if they ever 
really existed in anything at all resembling the form given in the alleged 
translations. No manuscripts in the original have ever been produced. 
However, it must be admitted that the poems contributed to break up 
the tyranny of the classical school of the eighteenth century and thus 
to prepare the way for the romantic revival. See article on Celtic Liter- 
ature in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 

64 28 " If we fly into the uttermost parts " : Psalm cxxxix. 

66 29 Thus the gate of hell : " Lasciate ogni speranza, vol ch' entrate " 
(Leave every hope, ye who enter). " These words of color obscure I 
saw written at the top of the gate " (Norton's translation of Dante's 
"Inferno," Canto III, p. 11). 

57 1 "I am the tomb" : "Inferno," Canto XL Norton's translation, 
p. 51. 

57 7 Count Ugolino : "Inferno," Canto XXXIII. Ibid. pp. 181-187. 
This is that most pathetic picture of the starving of Count Ugolino and 
his sons in the ninth circle. 

57 8 Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) : the celebrated English portrait 
painter, first president of the Royal Academy, intimately associated with 
Samuel Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick, Burke, and other great English- 
men of his time. We get an interesting view of Reynolds from Boswell's 
" Life of Johnson," also from Goldsmith's epitaph in " The Retaliation." 
Hazlitt refers to him many times, especially in Essays XIII and XIV, 
Works, VI, 122-145. 

57 28 Icimentation of Selma : Colma's lament in the " Songs of Selma " : 

Often had they seen the grove of Salgar, the dark dwelling of white-bosomed 
Colma. Colma left alone on the hill, with all her voice of song ! Salgar promised 
to come : but the night descended around. Hear the voice of Colma, when she 
sat alone on the hill ! 

Then follows the lament : 

I hear the call of years ! They say, as they pass along, why does Ossian sing ? 
Soon shall he lie in the narrow house, and no bard shall raise his fame ! Roll on, 
ye dark-brown years ; ye bring no joy on your course ! 

ON ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 
This was introductory to the course of lectures, " The Dramatic Liter- 
ature of the Age of Elizabeth," delivered at the Surrey Institution in 
1820. They were published in the same year and again in 1821. The 
present text is a reprint of the second edition. 



332 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

58 5 Drake: Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596), great English admiral 
and circumnavigator, '" the terror of the Spanish Indies in the reign 
of Queen Elizabeth." 

58 5 Coke: Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), the jurist, contemporary, 
of Shakspere and Bacon. 

58 7-8 Jonson, Ben Jonson (1573-1637) ; Beaumont, Francis Beaumont 
(1584-1616) ; Fletcher, John Fletcher (1579-1625). 

59 9-10 Webster, John Webster (i58o.'-i625) ; Deckar, Thomas 
Dekker (c. 1570-c. 1641.^); Marston, John Marston (1575 ?-i634) ; 
Marlow, Christopher Marlowe (i 564-1 593); Chapman, George Chapman 
(1559 .?-i634) ; Heywood, Thomas Heywood (? 1575-1650) ; Middleton, 
Thomas Middleton {1570-1627) ; Rowley, William Rowley (? 1585-1642). 

59 10 " How lov'd, how honour'd once " : Pope, " Elegy to the Memory 
of an Unfortunate Lady," I. 71 : 

How lov'd, how honour'd once, avails thee not. 

59 ."0 "' draw the curtain of Time " : " Twelfth Night," I, v, 249. 

60 (i, 20 "of poring pedantry," also "pomp of elder days": sonnet 
written in a blank leaf of Dugdale, " Monasticon," Thomas Warton 
(1728-1790). 

60 18 "the sacred influence of light " : " Paradise Lost," II, 1034. 

61 20 "nor can we think what thoughts" : Dryden, "The Hind and 
the Panther," I, 315 : 

Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive. 

61 29 "Think," says Shakespear : " Cymbeline," III, iv. 

62 9 " by nature's own " : " Twelfth Night," I, v, 257. 

62 12 " where Pan, knit with the Graces " : " Paradise Lost," IV, 266. 

62 15 that " there are more things " : " Ilamlet," I, v, 166. 

63 8 " matchless, divine, what we will " : Pope, " Imitations of Horace," 
Book II, Epistle I, I. 70: 

Style the divine, the matchless, what you will. 

64 3 " they were sought after " : Dr. Johnson. 

65 5 " less than the smallest dwarfs " : " Paradise Lost," I, 779. 
65 7 "desiring this man's art" : Shakspere, Sonnet XXIV, 1. 7. 

65 13 "in shape and gesture proudly eminent" : " Paradise Lost," I, 590. 
65 25 " his soul was like a star " : Wordsworth, " Milton, Written in 
London, 1802." 

65 27 " drew after him " : " Paradise Lost," II, 692. 

66 1 Venice Preserved : published in 1682 ; a very popular play even 
in the early nineteenth century. 



NOTES 



333 



66 15 Jonson's learned sock : Milton, " L'AIlegro," 1. 132. 
69 12 " penetrable stuff " : " Hamlet," III, iv, 36. 
69 2o " My peace I give unto you " : John xiv, 27. 
69 25 " they should love one another " : John xv, 12. 

69 27 " Woman, behold thy son " : John xix, 26. 

70 28 "' to the Jews a stumbling block " : i Corinthians i, 23. 

71 2 "we perceive a softness coming over the heart of a nation " : as 
yet no one has discovered the source of this quotation. See Notes and 
Queries, ninth series, VII, 388. 

71 7 " soft as sinews": "Hamlet," III, iii, 71. 

71 2(j "The best of men" : Dekker, "The Honest Whore," Tart I, 
Act V, scene ii. 

72 2() Tasso by Fairfax : Edward Fairfax (1580 ?-i635). The first edi- 
tion of his translation of Tasso, "Jerusalem Delivered," appeared in 
1600. 

72 27 Ariosto by Harrington: Sir John Harrington (1561-1612) pub- 
lished a translation of Ariosto, " Orlando Furioso." 

72 27 Homer and Hesiod by Chapman : George Chapman (i 559-1 634), 
dramatist and translator. His "Iliad" was published in 161 1, the 
" Odyssey " in 1616. 

72 28 Virgil long before : probably refers to the translation of the 
"zEneid"by Gawain Douglas (1474-1522). The translation into ten- 
syllable meter was made between 1501 and 15 13. 

72 28 Ovid soon after : Ovid was translated by Arthur Golding in 

1565-1575- 

72 28 Sir Thomas North (1535 .'-160 1 .^) : from this translation of Plu- 
tarch (1579) Shakspere drew most of his material for his Roman plays. 

72 31 Catiline and Sejanus : classical plays by Ben Jonson, the former 
in 161 1, the latter in 1603. 

73 3 the satirist Aretine : Pietro Aretino (1492-1557), an Italian 
writer of the sixteenth century, author of comedies, sonnets, licentious 
dialogues, and a few religious works. When very young he was banished 
from Arezzo on account of a satirical sonnet which he composed against 
indulgences. According to some accounts he died by falling from a chair 
in a fit of laughter caused by hearing an indecent story. 

73 3 Machiavel : Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), the distinguished 
Italian statesman and writer, author of "II Principe" (The Prince), 1513. 

73 3 Castiglione: Baldassare Castiglione (147S-1529), diplomatist and 
man of letters. His famous work was " II Cortegiano " (The Courtier), 
called by the Italians "II Libro d'Oro " (The Book of Gold), and was 
published by Aldus in Venice in 1528. It was first translated into 



334 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

English by Thomas Hoby in 1561. Johnson called it "the best book 
that ever was written on good breeding." 

73 5 Ronsard : Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), famous P'rench poet, 
one of the Pleiade, a group of seven writers who applied to the vernac- 
ular language the critical principles which they had learned from the 
classics. 

73 5 Du Bartas : Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas (1544-1590). His 
chief work, " La Sepmaine," a poem on the creation of the world, went 
through thirty editions in six years. He was much admired by Spenser, 
Ben Jonson, and other Elizabethan poets. Joshua Sylvester made a 
translation of the book in 1598. 

74 14 "' Fortunate fields and groves " : " Paradise Lost," IH, 56S-570 : 

Like those Hesperian Gardens famed of old, 
Fortunate fields and groves, &c. 

74 22 Prospero's Enchanted Island : it has been thought probable that 
Shakspere in writing "The Tempest" had before him the account by 
Jourdan of the wreck of Sir George Somers's ship in a tempest off the 
Bermudas, under the title " A Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise 
called the He of Divels," etc. Setebos and perhaps other names he may 
have taken not from this book but from Eden's " History of Travaile," 

1577- 

74 2(5 "Right well I wote " : " Faerie Queene," Book \\, Proem i. 

75 2!) Lear is founded on an old ballad : this ballad, " King Leir," to 
be found in Percy's " Reliques," is probably not so old as Shakspere. 
The play is based on the " Historia Regum Britonum " (c. 1130) of 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, but Shakspere probably took the story from 
Holinshed's Chronicle. 

75 29 Othello on an Italian novel : " The Hecatommithi " of Giraldi 
Cinthio (i 504-1 573), published in 1565. 

76 2 '" those bodiless creations " : " Hamlet," TIL iv, 138. 
76 8 " Your face, my Thane " : " Macbeth," L v, 60. 

76 lo Tyrrel and Forrest : " Richard HI," IV, ii and iii. Tyrrel, 
Dighton, and Forrest at the order of Richard killed the princes in the 
Tower. 

76 20 "" thick and slab " : " Macbeth," IV, i, 32. 

76 25 "snatched a wild and fearful joy" : Gray, "Ode on a Distant 
Prospect of Eton College," 11. 38-40 : 

Still as they run they look behind, 
They hear a voice in every wind, 
And snatch a fearful joy. 



NOTES 335 

76 2!t The tales of Boccaccio: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)- " The 
Decameron," one hundred tales supposed to be told by a group of ten 
people on ten successive days in 1348, the year of the great plague in 
Florence. 

76 30 Fletcher the poet : this is perhaps a bit confusing, as one might 
think at first of Phineas Fletcher, author of " The Purple Island." How- 
ever, John Fletcher (i 579-1625), who died of the plague, is intended. 

76 30 Marlow was stabbed: Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593). To 
escape the plague which was raging in London in 1593, he was living 
in Deptford, and there in a tavern brawl he received a wound in the 
head, his own knife being turned against him by a serving man, upon 
whom he had drawn it. The parish record bears the entry, " Christopher 
Marlowe, slain by Francis Archer, the i of June, 1593." 

76 34 "The course of true love": "Midsummer Night's Dream," 
I, i, 134. 

77 3 "The age of chivalry " : a very famous passage. Burke, " Reflec- 
tions on the Revolution in France " (edited by E. J. Payne, 1885), p. 89. 

77 4 Jousts and tournaments : Strutt, " Sports and Pastimes of the 
People of England" (edited by Hone, 1838), p. 125. 

Tournaments and justs, though often confounded with each other, differed 
materially. The tournament was a conflict with many knights, divided into parties 
and engaged at the same time. The just was a separate trial of skill, when only 
one man was opposed to another. 

77 fi Sir Philip Sidney (i 554-1 586) : poet and romance writer, always 
considered as the type of English chivalry. The story of his death at 
Zutphen is known everywhere. 

77 8 the gentle Surrey: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517- 
1547). His name is associated with that of Wyatt in Tottel's " Miscel- 
lany " (1557)- He has the distinction of being, in his translation of the 
"/Eneid," the first to introduce blank verse into English literature. 

77 13 Sir John Suckling (i 609-1 642) : English poet. From his father 
he inherited large estates. He was a noted gambler and has the distinc- 
tion of being the inventor of the game of cribbage. 

77 14 " Who prized black eyes " : " The Session of the Poets," 
verse 20. 

77 17 " Like strength reposing " : Keats, " Sleep and Poetry," 1. 237 : 

'T is might half slumb'ring on its own right arm. 

77 24 "they heard the tumult " : Cowper, " The Task," IV, 99-100. 
77 31 Fletcher's Noble Kinsmen : this play was printed in quarto in 
1634. On the title-page it was stated to have been written by "the 



336 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

admirable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William 
Shakespeare." Modern scholarship is disposed to accept this, granting 
to Fletcher the most of the play. See A. H. Thorndike's " Influence of 
Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere." 

78 5 Saturnalian licence : originally the great festival of Saturn was 
celebrated on the nineteenth of December, but after Cassar's reform 
of the calendar, on the seventeenth. However, in popular usage the 
celebration lasted seven days. The time was one of general joy and 
mirth. No punishment was inflicted, no war was declared. All distinc- 
tions were forgotten so that masters ate with slaves and the toga was 
not worn. Hence the phrase has come to mean absolute unrestraint. 

78 13 Returne from Parnassus : " Printed in i6o6, 4to, but written 
during the reign of Elizabeth. It is a shrewd and lively dramatic satire 
on many of the poets and playwrights of the period, like the ' Great 
Assizes holden in Parnassus,' 1645, ^^^ Suckling's "Session of the 
Poets ' " (W. C. Hazlitt). 

78 30 '" it snowed of meat and drink " : " Canterbury Tales," Prologue, 

345- 

78 34 as Mr. Lamb observes : cf. " Specimens of English Dramatic 
Poets," Lamb's note attached to Marston's " What You Will." 

79 4 " in act and complement extern " : " Othello," I, i, 62-63 '■ 

The native act and figure of my heart 
In compliment extern. 

79 11 Deckar has given an admirable description of a mad-house : 
" Honest Whore," Part I, Act V, scene ii. 

79 18 " A Mad World, my Masters " : a comedy by Thomas Middleton 
(1 60S). 

80 11 " like birdlime, brains and all " : " Othello," II, i, 128. 

80 23 Materiam superabat opus: Ovid, " Metamorphoses," II, 5. 

81 11 "but Pan is a God" : John Lyly, " Midas," Act IV, scene i. 

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 

Our present text is the first of the two papers in " Table Talk " on 
this subject. Our reprint is from the second edition of 1S24, a reprint 
of the first edition (Vol. I, 1821 ; Vol. II, 1822). These essays appeared 
in the London Mac^azine for December, 1820. 

82 1 "There is a pleasure in painting": see Dryden, "Spanish, 
Friar," II, i : 

There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad, which none but madmen know. 



NOTES 337 

Or Cowper, "The Task, the Timepiece," 11. 2S5-2S6: 

There is a pleasure in poetic pains 
Which only poets know. 

82 15 "study with joy her manner": Cowper, "The Task," III, 

227-228: 

. . . acknowledges with joy 
His manner, and with rapture tastes his style. 

82 21) spolia opima : the spoils taken by one Roman general from 
another. 

83 IG " more tedious than a twice-told tale " : " Kingjohn," III, iv, loS: 

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale. 

83 note Werter: "The Sorrows of Werter" by Goethe (1749-1832). 

This extract is taken from Letter VIII, May 26. This book was pub- 
lished in October, 1774, and made Goethe widely famous. It is the book 
of the age, expressing the pain under which the thoughtful men of the 
time were languishing. See Carlyle, " Lectures on German Literature " ; 
also Mazlitt, " On the German Drama," Works, V, 358-364. 

84 7 " My mind to me a kingdom is " : the first line of the poem attrib- 
uted to Sir Edward Dyer (i 550 ?-i6o7). 

84 11 " Pure in the last recesses of the mind " : " Dryden's translation 
of the Second Satire of Persius, line 233. According to Frances Rey- 
nolds ('Johnsonian Miscellanies' (edited by G. B. Hill), II, 272), the 
lines are quoted by Johnson at the end of an eloquent eulogium of 
Mrs. Thrale" (Works, VI, 470). 

85 8 " palpable to feeling as to sight " : perhaps remembering the line 
from "Othello," I, ii, 76: 

'T is probable and palpable to thinking. 

85 2G Wilson: Richard Wilson (1714-1782), famous landscape painter, 
one of the original members of the Royal Academy in 1768. He has 
been called " The English Claude." For frequent references to Wilson, 
see Hazlitt, "Conversations of Northcote," Works, Vol. VI. 

86 17 The first head I ever tried to paint : " Memoirs," I, 108, note : 

The person who sat to him for this picture (nearly destroyed by megilp) was 
an old cottager he met near Manchester. She died very soon after her likeness 
was taken. The picture used for a long time to hang in Mr. John Hunt's room 
when he was in Coldbath Fields Prison, and Mr. Hazlitt would go there and gaze 
at it fondly. It is now in the hands of the family. 

See Introduction, p. xix ; also Hazlitt, "Conversations of James 
Northcote" (edited by Edmund Gosse, 1894), pp. xvii ff. 



338 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

86 32 I had seen an old head by Rembrandt at Burleigh-House : he is 
supposed to have been at the age of about seventeen (1795) when Haz- 
litt made the visit to Burleigh which left so vivid an impression upon 
his memory. He made his second visit probably in 1803. In 1824, in 
writing of the pictures at Burleigh House, he speaks of the great differ- 
ence between the effect then and now : 

Thy [Burleigh House] groves were leafless then as now : it was the middle of 
winter twice that I visited thee before ; but the lark mounted in the sky, and the 
sun smote my youthful blood with its slant ray, and the ploughman whistled as he 
drove his team afield ; Hope spread out its glad vistas through thy fair domains, 
Oh, Burleigh ! Fancy decked thy walls with works of sovereign art, and it was 
spring, not winter, in my breast. All is still the same, like a petrifaction of the 
mind — the same things in the same places; but their effect is not the same 
upon me. I am twenty years the worse for ivear and tear. . . . Ah ! thought I, 
there is that fine old head by Rembrandt ; there within those cold grey walls, the 
painter of old age is enshrined, immortalized in some of his inimitable works. 

87 4 Sir Joshua: SirJoshuaReynolds(i723-i792);see"Conversationsof 
James Northcote." This point is discussed in Hazlitt's two papers on Sir 
Joshua Reynolds's " Discourses," especially the second, in " Table Talk." 

In connection with this the following passage is interesting : 

Among other essays in painting which he made upon commission, was in 
half length of Sir Joshua Reynolds, with which he was put out of conceit by wit- 
nessing a performance of Indian jugglers; and a head of Lear, which, from all 
that I can learn, was quite an early experiment. It is a sketch of the head and 
shoulders of the old mad king, with his white hair waving in the wind, very char- 
acteristic and Shakespearian. 

He was very impatient with himself, and when he could not produce the effect 
he desired, he has been known to cut the canvas into ribbons. The grand object 
of his ambition as an artist was the illustration of the subject of Jacob's Ladder; 
and here he never, in his own estimation, so much as approached success. 

In 1804 he commenced a portrait of his father, who was now beginning to get 
on in years. " I am sure my father had as little vanity for the art as most persons, 
yet when he had sat to me a few times ... he grew evidently uneasy when it was 
a fine day, that is, when the sun shone into the room, so that we could not paint ; 
and when it became cloudy, began to bustle about and ask me if I was not getting 
ready. . . . Between my father's love of sitting and mine of painting, we hit 
upon a tolerable likeness at last ; but the picture is cracked and gone, and megilp 
(the bane of the English School) has destroyed as fine an old Nonconformist 
head as we could hope to see in these degenerate times." 

The operating of the megilp has not been quite so fatal in the present instance 
as the painter's words might leave us to conclude. The picture is still in exist- 
ence, and although the deleterious element in the old varnish had undoubtedly 
damaged it to some slight extent, it is in very fair preservation at this moment, 
after upwards of sixty years' exposure to all atmospheric influences. It was 



NOTES 339 

exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806, where perhaps the artist had made up 
his mind to let it go and to give no more last touches. . . . 

He had abandoned now all expectation of succeeding as an artist ; but it was 
while he was in London, in 1805, as I have some reason to think, that he painted 
the portrait of Lamb in the costume of a Venetian Senator, which has this double 
interest, that is, the likeness of so dear and old a friend, and that it was the last 
time that he took the pencil in hand.l The picture represents Lamb as he was ■ 
about thirty, and it is by far the most pleasing and characteristic resemblance we 
possess of him as a comparatively young man. The costume was the painter's whim 
and must be said to detract from the effect of the whole ("Memoirs," I, 109-113). 

88 5 "' as in a glass darkly " : i Corinthians xiii, 12. 

88 7 " sees into the life of things " : Wordsw^orth, " Lines Composed 
a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," 1. 50. 

88 18 Jan Steen (i 626-1679) : famous Flemish figure painter. He 
liked to paint the comedy of daily life in a kindly manner, usually quite 
differently from Hogarth. 

88 18 Gerard Dow (1613-16S0) : celebrated Flemish painter. He was 
remarkable for the time and pains which he spent on all the details of 
his pictures. 

88 20 "mist, the common gloss of theologians": "Paradise Lost," 

V, 435-436- 

89 4 Opie : John Opie (1761-1807), historical and portrait painter, 
born in Cornwall. He was brought to London in 1780 under the patron- 
age of Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot). He wrote and lectured on art. 

89 4 Fuseli: see page 19 and note. 

89 4 Northcote : James Northcote (1746-1831), historical and portrait 
painter, a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His works number about two thou- 
sand. See Hazlitt, "Conversations of James Northcote," Works, Vol. VL 

89 11 Richardson . . . tells a story : Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745), 
author and portrait painter. He was an intimate friend of Pope, whose 
head he painted. He wrote a number of essays on painting. Sir Joshua 
Reynolds said that Richardson understood his art scientifically, but that 
his manner was cold and hard. 

90 15-l(i Correggio (1494-1534), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Andrea 
del Sarto (i 487-1 531) : distinguished Italian painters. 

90 19 " That you might almost say " : John Donne, " An Anatomy of 
the World, Second Anniversary," 1. 246 : 

. . . Her pure and eloquent blood 
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, 
That one might almost say her body thought. 

1 Perhaps with the exception of a copy of Titian, which he attempted to make 
for a friend later in life ; but this was never completed. 



340 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

90 note i. The famous Schiller (1759-1805) ; Ilazlitt knew Schiller's 
"Don Carlos" and "The Robbers" and was much influenced by the 
views of political and intellectual liberty expressed by Schiller. See 
Works, V, 358-364. 

90 note 2. The rich impasting : impasting is the thick covering of the 
paint. 

90 note 2. Titian (1477-1576); Giorgione (1477-1510). 

91 8 old Abraham Tucker: By 1804 Hazlitt's abridgment of Tucker's 
" Light of Nature Revealed " had been begun. See Works, IV, 37 1-385. 

91 21 "the source of thirty years": see Northcote, "Life of Rey- 
nolds," II, 286. 

91 31 Shaftesbury's Characteristics : " Characteristics of Men, Man- 
ners, Opinions, and Times" was the famous work of the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury, Anthony Ashley Cooper. See p. 13 and note. His work was illus- 
trated by the well-known line engraver, Simon Gribelin {1661-1733). 
Gribelin went to England in 1680 and was very popular among the 
nobility. His most famous work was the "Apotheosis of James I" on 
the ceiling of the banqueting room in Whitehall. 

92 10 "ever in the haunch of winter sings " : " 2 Henry IV," IV, iv, 92. 
92 20 Correggio, " / also am a painter! " : see Vasari, " Lives " (edited 

by Blashfield and Hopkins), III, 32 seq. Though Correggio was exceed- 
ingly sensitive and modest, this legend regarding him long persisted, 
" Anchio son pittore" (I also am a painter). 

92 20 Honourable Mr. Skeffington : Sir Lumley St. George Skeffing- 
ton (1771-1850), author of "The Sleeping Beauty" and other plays. 

92 30 the battle of Austerlitz : December 2, 1805, a great victory for 
Napoleon. 

93 5 but he himself is gone : Hazlitt's father, William Hazlitt, the elder, 
died July 16, 1820. He had lived and preached in the village of Wem 
from 1787 to 1805. From there he moved to Addlestone, Surrey, thence 
to Crediton and Winswood. 

ON READING OLD BOOKS 

This essay appeared first in the London Magazine for 182 1 and was 
reprinted in "The Plain Speaker" (1826) as the third essay in Vol- 
ume II. The differences between the two imprints are immaterial. Our 
text follows that of " The Plain Speaker." 

94 4 Tales of My Landlord : a series of Scott's novels appearing under 
the title, " Tales of My Landlord, collected and arranged by Jedidiah 
Cleisbotham," beginning with " Black Dwarf " and " Old Mortality " in 



NOTES 341 

1S16, and including " Rob Roy" (1817), " Heart of Midlotliian " (181S), 
" Bride of. Lammermoor " (1819), and "Legend of Montrose" (1819). 

94 6 Lady Morgan (17S3 or 1785-1859): Sydney Owenson, daughter 
of Robert Owenson, was the author of stirring Irish tales and was very 
popular in her day. 

94 8 Anastasius : "Anastasius or Memoirs of a Greek, Written at the 
Close of the Eighteenth Century" appeared anonymously in 1819. It 
was received most favorably and was assigned to Byron. However, its 
author was Thomas Hope (1774 ?-i83i). The hero is a sort of oriental 
Gil Bias. The book was discussed in the Edinbtn-gh Review, March, 182 1. 

94 10 Delphine : a novel by Madame de Stael, published in 1802. 
See the Edinburgh Revieiv, April, 1803. 

94 IS Andrew Millar {1707-1768) : one of the most eminent book- 
sellers of the eighteenth century, publisher of Fielding's works and of 
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. Dr. Johnson once said of him, " I respect 
Millar, Sir, he has raised the price of literature." See E. Marston, 
" Sketches of Some Booksellers of the Time of Dr. Samuel Johnson " 
(1902). 

94 Ifl Thurloe's State Papers : a collection of the letters of John 
Thurloe (1616-1668) published in 1742. He was a very capable secre- 
tary of state during the Protectorate and has left in his papers a valuable 
record of the doings of the time. 

94 20 Sir William Temple (1628-1699) : his " Essays " were published 
in 1680 and 1692. Temple is to be remembered as a distinguished diplo- 
mat and the patron of Dean Swift. 

94 21 Sir Godfrey Kneller ( 1646-17 23) : his original name was Gott- 
fried Kniller. He became famous for his portraits of royalty. It was 
while sitting to Kneller for a portrait, commissioned by Pepys, that 
James heard the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange, the 
future William III. 

95 20 rifaccimentos : a new modeling or recasting of a literary work. 
The proper plural according to the Italian would be rifacinieiiti. 

96 8 Fortunatus's Wishing-Cap : in " The Nights " of Straparola, an 
Italian novelist of the sixteenth century. For an interesting account of 
this legend and its connection with the drama, see Professor C. H. Her- 
ford's " Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in 
the Sixteenth Century." 

96 11 Bruscambille: Sterne, "Tristram Shandy," Book III, chap. xxxv. 
96 12 Peregrine Pickle (1751) : by Tobias Smollett (1721-1771). 
96 12 Tom Jones: Masquerade, Book XIII, chap, vii ; Thrackum and 
Square, Book III, chap, iii; Molly Seagrim, Book IV, chap, viii; Sophia, 



342 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Book V, chap, iv ; Aunt's Lecture, Book VIL chap. iii. See Hazlitt, 
Works, VH, 3. 

97 14 Ballantyne press : James Ballantyne (177 2-1833), a great friend of 
Walter Scott, established the press which printed Scott's works. It will be 
remembered that Scott assumed the great debt caused by the failure of 
this concern and spent the money from his books in paying the creditors. 

97 15 Minerva press : from this press in Leadenhall Street, London, 
were issued in the late years of the eighteenth and early nineteenth 
century popular romances, highly colored and very sensational. 

97 21 Cooke's pocket-edition : Cooke's " Select Edition of British 
Novels" (1792). John Cooke (1731-1810), bookseller, made large for- 
tunes in publishing popular works in weekly parts. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt 
says that Hazlitt became acquainted with this book through his father's 
being an original subscriber to the series. " In those days Cooke's 
edition of the British poets came up. . . . How I loved these little six- 
penny numbers, containing whole poets ! I doated on their size, on 
their wrapper, containing lists of other poets, and on the engravings 
from Kirk" (Leigh Hunt, "Autobiography" (i860), p. 76). 

97 24 Romance of the Forest: published 1791, by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe 
(1764-1823), writer of romantic tales which abound in descriptions of 
scenes of mystery and terror. 

97 25 " sweet in the mouth . . . bitter in the belly " : Revelation x, 9. 

97 27 " gay creatures " : Milton, " Comus," 1. 299. 

98 2 Tom Jones discovers Square : " Tom Jones," Book V, chap. v. 
98 3 Parson Adams: "Joseph Andrews," Book IV, chap. xiv. 

98 (i Joseph Andrews: Henry Fielding's first novel, published 1742, 
was inspired by the first English novel, " Pamela" (1740), by Richardson. 
98 13 Major Bath: in Fielding's novel, "Joseph Andrews." 
98 14 Commodore Trunnion : in " Peregrine Pickle," by Smollett. 
98 14 Trim : in Sterne's " Tristram Shandy." 
98 14 Uncle Toby : in " Tristram Shandy." 
98 15 Gil Bias : in Le Sage's satire of same name. 
98 15 Dame Lorenza Sephora : in " Gil Bias." 
98 in Laura : the lady to whom Petrarch wrote. 
98 10 Lucretia : in "Joseph Andrews." 

98 30 Chubb's Tracts: " Tracts and Posthumous Works," by Thomas 
Chubb (1697-1747), published in 1754. His tracts won for him a place 
among the deists of the eighteenth century. 

99 5 "" fate, free-will " : " Paradise Lost," II, 560. 

99 !) "Would I had never seen" : Christopher Marlowe's (i 564-1 593) 
" Dr. Faustus," scene xix. 



NOTES 343 

99 11 Hartley, Hume, Berkeley: David Hartley (1705-1757), "Observa- 
tions on Man" (1749); David Hume (1711-1776); George Berkeley 

(1685-1753)- 

99 11 Locke: John Locke (1632-1704), famous philosopher, author 
of " Essay on the Human Understanding" (1690). The first book treats 
of innate ideas, the second traces the origin of ideas, the third deals 
with languages, and the fourth lays down the limits of the understanding. 

99 13 Hobbes : Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), the noted English phi- 
losopher, gave an exposition of his political philosophy in his " Levia- 
than " (1651). 

99 19 New Eloise : Rousseau's " La Nouvelle Heloise " was published 
ini76i,his "Contrat Social "ini762,his"£mile" in 1762, and his "Con- 
fessions," begun in 1766 and finished not long before his death in 1778. 
References here are to Part VI, Letters IX-XI. 

99 32 I have spoken elsewhere: on the Character of Rousseau in " The 
Round Table," Works, Vol. L 

100 6 Sir Fopling Flutter : in the comedy, " The Man of Mode " 
(1676), by Sir George Etheredge (1635 .''-1691). 

100 18 leurre de dupe : Rousseau, "Confessions," IV, 4 : "A lure for a 
gull." See Works, IV, 5; VII, 225. 

100 20 " a load to sink " : " Henry VIII," III, i, 2. 

100 note a friend, who had some lottery puffs : Charles Lamb. Writ- 
ing to Mrs. Hazlitt, November 7, 1809, Mary Lamb says, "A man in 
the India House has resigned, by which Charles will get twenty pounds 
a year; and White has prevailed on him to write some more lottery 
puffs." 

Mr. Lucas says : " Of the lottery puffs we shall probably never know 
any more. They were, I imagine, written for Bish, the principal lottery 
contractor, whose devices to interest speculators were very varied and 
ingenious" ("Life of Lamb," I, 299). 

101 9 " Marcian Colonna " : title of a volume of poetry published in 1S20 
under the name of Barry Cornwall (B. W. Procter). The line quoted 
by Hazlitt begins Lamb's sonnet. 

101 10 Eve of St. Agnes : this poem by Keats was published in 1820. 

101 12 " come like shadows " : " Macbeth," IV, i, 3. 

101 26 the great preacher: Edward Irving (i 792-1 834) was born at 
Annan, near Ecclefechan, Carlyle's birthplace. While he attended 
Edinburgh University he gave private lessons to Jane Welsh. At 
Kirkcaldy in 18 16 he made the acquaintance of Carlyle, who had come 
to teach in the opposite school. Carlyle once said, " But for Irving I 
had never known what the communion of man with man means," 



344 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Before he went to London in July, 1822, he had given Carlyle an intro- 
duction to Jane Welsh. He always loved Jane Welsh, who said on one 
occasion, " If I had married Irving the tongues would never have been 
heard." His career before he went to London, his popularity and suc- 
cess there, have made him one of the most striking figures in ecclesias- 
tical history. There are many references to him in Lamb's Letters and 
in Crabb Robinson's Diary. See also Hazlitt's account of him, in " Spirit 
of the Age," IV, 222. 

101 30 "as the hart that panteth " : Psalm xlii, i. 

101 32 Schiller's Robbers : this play was printed in 1781 and produced 
in 1782. It made a great impression in Germany and in England. 

The Robbers was the first play I ever read : and the effect it produced upon 
me was the greatest. It stunned me like a blow, and I have not recovered enough 
from it to describe how it was. . . . Five-and-twenty years have elapsed since I 
first read the translation of the Robbers, but they have not blotted the imprecsion 
from my mind. — " Lectures on Age of Elizabeth," Lecture VIII (1S20). 

101 33 " Giving my stock " : "" As You Like It," II, i, 4S-49 : 

Giving thy sum of more 
To that which had too much. 

102 1 Coleridge's fine Sonnet: this sonnet was printed in 1796. The 
note appended seems to imply that Coleridge wrote it on his first read- 
ing of "The Robbers" at Cambridge not later than 1794. If so, he 
could have known Schiller only in the English version. 

102 7 I believe I may date : see " My First Acquaintance with Poets," 
pp. 175 ff. 

102 12 Valentine, Tattle, Miss Prue : characters in Congreve's " Love 
for Love " (1695). 

102 I'J Intus et in cute: Persius, " Satires," III, 30 : 

Ego te intus et in cute novi. 

I knew thee intimately and in the skin. 

102 24 Sir Humphry Davy (177S-1S29) : the famous natural philoso- 
pher. His lectures at the Royal Academy began in 1801. 

102 31 The Spectator, etc. : see " On Periodical Essayists," p. 14. 

103 8 Clarissa: heroine of " Clarissa Harlowe " (1748). 

103 8 Clementina: heroine of " Sir Charles Grandison " (1753). 

103 8 Pamela: heroine of " Pamela" (1740). 

103 8 " with every trick " : " All 's Well," I, i, 107. 

103 15 Miss : probably the lady of " Liber Amoris," Works, 

VII, 501. 



NOTES 345 

103 15 "that ligament, fine as it was": "Tristram Shandy," Book VI, 
chap. X, The Story of Le F"ever. The story continues from chap, vi to 
chap. xii. 

103 21 His story of the Hawk : " The Decameron," by Boccaccio, fifth 
day, ninth story. See in " Lectures on Age of EHzabeth," Works, V, 
346-347 : 

Federigo being in love, without meeting with any return, spends all his sub- 
stance, having nothing left but one poor hawk, which he gives to his lady for her 
dinner when she comes to his house ; she, knowing this, changes her resolution, 
and marries him, by which means he becomes very rich. 

103 24 I remember, as long ago as the year 1798 : it will be remembered 
that this was the year in which Hazlitt met Coleridge at Shrewsbury 
and later Wordsworth at Alfoxden. See " My First Acquaintance with 
Poets," pp. 175 ff- 

103 25 Farquhar . . . Recruiting Officer : Farquhar (1678-1707), promi- 
nent dramatist of the Restoration period, produced " The Recruiting 
Officer" in 1706. While he was in the army and stationed at Shrews- 
bury he wrote the play. 

103 2(3 "at one proud swoop " : " Macbeth," IV, iii, 219 : 

At one fell swoop. 

103 28 Burke's Reflections : see pp. 29 ff. and notes. 

103 note During the peace of Amiens : the terms of the peace of Amiens 
were concluded in March, 1S02. Negotiations were opened by Napoleon 
to allow him time to organize his resources. In May, 1803, England 
anticipated a renewal of his attack by a declaration of war. See Hazlitt's 
account in his " Life of Napoleon," chaps, xxx and xxxi. 

104 4 " with all its giddy raptures " : Wordsworth, " Lines Composed 
a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey": 

That time is past 
And all its dizzy raptures. 

104 5 " embalmed with odours " : " Paradise Lost," II, 843. 

104 14 " His form had not yet lost " : " Paradise Lost," I, 591. 

104 18 "falls flat" : ibid. I, 460-461. 

104 28 Letter to a Noble Lord: in 1796 an attack was made by the 
Duke of Bedford and Lord Lauderdale upon Burke on account of 
the pension which he received from the government. His reply in the 
letter with the name given above (1796) is one of our classics, called by 



346 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Lord Morley the most splendid repartee in the EngHsh language. See 
" Life of Burke," by John Morley, p. 198. The reader should compare it 
with Hazlitt's Letter to William Gifford, Works, Vol. L SeeHazlitt, "Polit- 
ical Essays," Character of Burke, Works, Vol. IH, especially pp. 335-336. 

104 33 Junius : the signature of the anonymous writer of letters who 
has succeeded in baffling the curiosity of critics for more than a hun- 
dred years. These letters, attacking the government, appeared in the 
Public Adveriiser, a paper published by Woodfall, from January 21, 
1769, to January 21, 1772. The sensation created by these attacks not 
only on parties and policies but also upon private individuals was tre- 
mendous. The authorship has been attributed to at least thirty-five 
persons, of whom Burke was the choice of contemporary opinion. At 
present the strongest evidence seems to point to Sir Philip Francis 
(1740-1818), a prominent Whig politician and a strong pamphleteer. 
The arguments for and against the authorship of Francis have been 
summarized and examined by Sir Leslie Stephen in the " Dictionary of 
National Biography " under the name of Francis, Vol. XX. 

105 4 " he, like an eagle " : " Coriolanus," V, vi, 1 1 5. 

105 15 Essay on Marriage : no such essay by Wordsworth is at present 
known to exist. It would seem either that " Marriage " is a misprint for 
some other word, or that Hazlitt was mistaken in the subject of the 
essay referred to by Coleridge. Ilazlitt is probably recalling a conver- 
sation with Coleridge in Shropshire at the beginning of 1798 (see "My 
First Acquaintance with Poets," p. 175), at which time a " Letter to the 
Bishop of Llandaff " (1793) was the only notable work which Words- 
worth had published (Works, VII, 501). 

105 note Is this the present Earl? James Maitland, eighth earl of 
Lauderdale (1759-1839), succeeded his father in August, 1789. See 
Works, VII, 501. 

106 13 Lord Clarendon's (i 608-1 674) : " History of the Rebellion and 
Civil Wars in England" (1702-1704). 

106 20 Froissart : Jean Froissart (1338-1410 ?), French chronicler and 
raconteur. 

106 20 Hollingshed : Ralph Holinshed (died about 1580), "Chronicles 
of Englande, Scotlande, and Ireland" (1577). 

106 20 Stowe : John Stow (i525.?-i6o5), " Summarie of Englyshe 
Chronicles" (1561); "A Survey of London" (1598). 

106 20 Fuller's Worthies : Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), "The History 
of the Worthies of England" (1662). 

106 23 A Wife for a Month (1623). 

106 24 Thierry and Theodoret (1621). 



NOTES 347 

106 26 Thucydides: the great Athenian historian, born in 471 n.c. and 
died about 401. Macaulay regarded him as " the greatest historian that 
ever hved." 

106 26 Guicciardini : Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540), prominent 
ItaHan historian. 

106 28 Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda : the last work of Cervantes, 
pubHshed in 1617, the year after Cervantes's death. 

106 28 Galatea: the first work of Cervantes (1585), a pastoral 
romance. 

106 29 "another Yarrow": Yarrow Unvisited," by Wordsworth. It 
will be remembered that Wordsworth wrote several poems of which the 
scene is laid upon the banks of the Yarrow. 

ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 

This essay first appeared in the London Magazine for August, 1821 ; 
it was then reprinted as the first essay in the second volume of "Table 
Talk" (1822). 

Nicolas Poussin (i 594-1665) was a celebrated French painter. See 
Hazlitt, " Notes of a Journey through France and Italy," Works, Vol. IX, 
especially pp. 107-110. The large part of Poussin's best work is pre- 
served in the Louvre Gallery at Paris, with a few good examples in the 
National Gallery in London. 

107 1 " And blind Orion " : Keats, '" Endymion," II, 198 : 

At this with madden'd stare, 
And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood ; 
Like old Decalion mountain'd o'er the flood, 
Or blind Orion hungry for the mom. 

107 13 the "grey dawn and the Pleiades": "Paradise Lost," VII, 

373-374- 

107 26 Sir Joshua has done him justice : " the favourite subjects of 
Poussin were ancient fables ; and no painter was ever better qualified 
to paint such subjects, not only from his being eminently skilled in the 
knowledge of the ceremonies, customs and habits of the ancients, but 
from his being so well acquainted with the different characters which 
those who invented them gave to their allegorical figures." 

For the entire subject see Joshua Reynolds, " Discourses," V. 

108 3 '" denote a foregone conclusion " : " Othello," III, iii. 

108 9 " take up the isles as a very little thing " : Isaiah xl, 15. 

109 6 " gives to airy nothing " : " Midsummer Night's Dream," V, i, 16. 



348 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

110 10 His Giants : these are pictures by Poussin, dealing with Jupiter, 
Pan, iiacchus, and other mythological subjects, in the National and 
Dulwich Galleries in London and in the Louvre in Paris. 

110 note Vignuel de Marville : this passage is taken from " Memoirs 
of the Life of Nicholas Poussin," by Maria Graham (Lady Callcott) 
(1820), pp. 35-36. 

110 note Mr. West: Benjamin West (1738-1820), American history 
and portrait painter, was born at Springfield, Pennsylvania. In 1763 he 
settled in I^ondon as a historical painter and became eminently success- 
ful. On the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds he was elected his successor 
as president of the Royal Academy, an office which he held for twenty- 
eight years. He died in 1820 and was buried in St. Paul's, London. 

111 1, 2 Plague of Athens, the Deluge : both pictures are in the Louvre 
Gallery in Paris, Nos. 710 and 739 (see Hazlitt, IX, 491). A repetition 
of the former picture, formerly in the Colonna Palace at Rome, was 
presented to the National Gallery in 1838. The proper title is " Plague 
among the Philistines at Ashdod " (No. 165). 

Ill 19 a picture of Aurora : " Cephalus and Aurora," by Poussin, in 
the National Gallery (No. 65). 

111 22 Tithonus : by the prayers of Eos (Dawn) who loved him, 
Tithonus obtained from the gods immortality, but not eternal youth, in 
consequence of which he completely shrank together in his old age ; 
whence a decrepit old man was proverbially called Tithonus. See 
Tennyson's poem of that name. 

112 5 Satyrs and Bacchantes : in Mr. Angerstein's collection there 
was a " Dance of Bacchanals," by Poussin, now No. 42 in the National 
Gallery, Works, IX, 14. 

112 8 "Leaping like wanton kids": Spenser, "Faerie Queene," Book I, 
canto vi, stanza 14. 

112 24 picture of the shepherds : see Hazlitt's essay, " On the Progress 
of Art," in Works, I, 163. This picture, often mentioned by Hazlitt, is 
in the Louvre (No. 734). It expressed, according to some, the idea of 
the shortness of life. 

112 27 Et ego in Arcadia vixi : this refers to Poussin's celebrated 
picture of some Arcadian shepherds standing near a tomb and reading 
with surprise this inscription upon it. The source of the Latin remains 
undiscovered. See Notes and Queries, sixth series, VI, 396, where pre- 
ceding references are given. 

113 5 "within the book and volume of the brain" : "Hamlet," I, v, i. 
113 11 "he who knows of these delights": Milton, "Sonnet to 

Mr. Lawrence " : 



NOTES 349 

He who of those dehghts can judge, and spare 
To interpose them oft, is not unwise. 

113 2() the Caracci : usually spelled Carracci. There were the brothers 
Agostino (1558-1602) and Annibale (i 560-1 609) and their cousin Lodo- 
vico (1555-1619), all founders of the Bolognese school of painting. 

114 3 " Old Genius " : " Faerie Queene," Book III, canto vi, stanzas 

31-32- 

114 15 Blenheim: see Works, IX, 71-75. 

114 1(5 Mr. Angerstein: John Julius Angerstein (1735-1823), rich 
merchant and patron of the fine arts. His collection of about forty 
famous paintings became the basis of the present National Gallery. 
See " The Picture Galleries in England," Works, Vol. IX. 

114 20 since the Louvre is stripped: in the twenty years after 1793 
great art treasures were brought to the Louvre in consequence of the 
successive French victories in different parts of Europe. In 181 5 when 
the allies took possession of Paris most of these pictures were returned 
to the countries from which they had come. 

114 22 as a rich jewel in his Iron Crown : Napoleon was crowned in 
Paris on December 2, 1804. A deputation of the republic of Lom- 
bardy came from Italy to Paris to offer him the Iron Crown of Charle- 
magne. It consisted of a plain circlet of gold covering a ring of iron, 
said to be composed of the nails of the Cross. The ceremony took 
place in the cathedral of Milan. Taking the Iron Crown from the 
hands of the Archbishop of Milan, Napoleon placed it upon his head, 
calling aloud, " Dieu me I'a donnee ; gare a qui la touche," which ex- 
pression became the legen'd of the Order of the Iron Crown, founded 
by the Emperor to commemorate the event. See Ilazlitt, " Life of 
Napoleon," chap, xxxiv. See also Chambers, " Book of Days," i, 673. 
Napoleon died at Longwood on the island of St. Helena on May 5, 
1821. 

ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 

This essay originally appeared as the last (No. XVII) of the second 
volume of "Table Talk" (1822). 

115 1 "And our little life": "The Tempest," IV, i, 156; a part 
of the famous passage on the monument to Shakspere in Westminster 
Abbey. 

115 10 Bickerstaff: see "On Periodical Essayists," p. 14. 

115 13 the Globe : a favorite coffeehouse of Goldsmith, in Fleet Street. 
See Forster, " Life of Goldsmith," chap, xvii, p. 270. See also Timbs, 
" Clubs and Club Life in London," p. 404. 



350 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

116 15 Sterne brought out the volumes: the first two volumes of "Tris- 
tram Shandy" appeared in 1760', the third and fourth in 1761, the fifth 
and sixth in 1762, the seventh and eighth in 1765, and the last in 1767. 

115 2() " gorge rises at " : " Hamlet," V, i, 206. 

116 () perdus: lost, invisible. 

116 14 stone aisles of that old Temple church : Hazlitt refers to the 
nine monuments of Templars of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
consisting of recumbent figures in full armor in the Temple Church in 
London. 

116 18 Holy War : the wars of the Crusaders. It used to be thought 
that the crossing of the legs of the recumbent figures of knights in the 
churches, as in the Temple Church, was a sign that the knights buried 
beneath had taken part in the Crusades. 

117 3 "The wars we well remember" : "Faerie Queene," Book II, 
canto ix, stanza 56. 

117 33 " The present eye " : " Troilus and Cressida," III, iii, 180. 

118 7 "Oh! thou strong heart!": Webster, "The White Devil, or 
Vittoria Corombona," V, iii, 96 (Mermaid edition). 

118 29 the downfall of the Bourbons : the noble family of Bourbon 
from which so many European kings have sprung took its name from 
a district in France called Bourbonnais. The family dates from the 
ninth century. 

118 .32 No young man ever thinks : Hazlitt attributes this remark 
to his brother John, the painter. 

119 6 "This sensible warm motion": "Measure for Measure," III, 
i, 120. 

119 8 " turn to withered, weak, and grey " : " Paradise Lost," XI, 540. 
119 27 " gone into the wastes of time " : Shakspere, Sonnet XII : 

That thou among the wastes of time must go. 

119 note Young, " Night Thoughts," I, 424. 

120 note Schiller's Don Carlos (1787): the Marquis, the impersona- 
tion of all that Schiller considers most noble in man, dies in the first 
scene of Act V. 

121 7 Zanetto, lascia: Rousseau, " Confessions," Partie II, Livre VII 

(1743-1744)- 

121 15 I have never seen death but once : " Memoirs of William Haz- 
litt," I, 170. This refers to the first son of William Hazlitt, who was born 
January 1 5, 1809, and died on the fifth of July of the same year. Compare 
the passage in De Quincey's " Autobiography," describing his first sight 
of death. " Selections from Ue Quincey " (edited by Turk), pp. 6 seq. 



NOTES 351 

121 26 at my breast : a paragraph which was in the manuscript of the 
essay is here omitted from the editions in HazHtt's life-time : 

I did not see my father after he was dead, but I saw Death shake him by the 
palsied hand and stare him in the face. He made as good an end as Falstaff ; 
though different, as became him. After repeating the name of his R[edeemer] 
often, he took my mother's hand, and, looking up, put it in my sister's, and so 
expired. There was something graceful and gracious in his nature, which showed 
itself in his last act. 

12127 Chantry's monument: Sir Francis Chantry (1782-1841), dis- 
tinguished English sculptor. The monument mentioned here is of two 
children asleep in each other's arms. It forms a monumental design in 
Lichfield Cathedral and is much admired. 

122 10 " Still from the tomb " : Gray, " Elegy," 11. 91-92 : 

E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, 
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. 

122 12 Tucker's Light of Nature Pursued: a miscellany, "The Light 
of Nature Followed" (i76S-i778),by Abraham Tucker (1705-1774), pub- 
lished under the name of Edward Search. Hazlitt's abridgment of this 
book was published in 1S07. 

123 32 " A little rule " : Dyer, " Grongar Hill," 11. 89-92 : 

A little rule, a little sway, 
A sunbeam in a winter's day. 
Is all the proud and mighty have 
Betwixt the cradle and the grave. 

124 2 " A great man's memory " : " Hamlet," III, ii, 139. 

125 4: Romeo runs his " seasick, weary bark" : " Romeo and Juliet," 
V, iii, 118. 

125 16 as Pierre says: Otway, "Venice Preserved," IV, ii: 

And carry up and down this cursed city, 

A discontented and repining spirit. 

Burdensome to itself, a few years longer ; 

To lose it, may be, at last in a lewd quarrel 

For some new friend, treacherous and false as thou art ! 

125 34 Dr. Johnson was an instance : Boswell gives us repeated 
examples of the fear of death, which Johnson seems to have had to an 
uncommon degree. See the following interesting references in Bos- 
well's " Life " (edited by Birkbeck Hill), II, 106 ; III, 1 53, 295 ; IV, 253 
(n. 4), 259, 278, 280, 289, 299-300, 366, 394, 399 ; V, 380. Rousseau said, 
"' I am not afraid of death but I dread pain." 



;S2 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 



ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 

This essay was written at Winterslow Hut, January i8 and 19, 1821, 
and first appeared as No. X in Vol. I of " Table Talk " (1821). 

127 1 "Remote, unfriended" : Goldsmith, "The Traveller," 1. i. 

127 1(1 Winterslow : after their marriage Hazlitt and his wife went to 
Winterslow to live. Mrs. Hazlitt had inherited some cottages in this 
little village about seven miles from Salisbury on the Andover road. 
Here their first son, to be called William, was born January 15, 1809 
and died the following July. After this misfortune the Ilazlitts invited 
Charles and Mary Lamb, Martin Burney, and Colonel Phillips to Win- 
terslow to spend a few weeks. The fourteenth of July was set for the visit, 
but on account of the illness of Mary Lamb, the trip was postponed 
until the following October. There were many pleasant days together, 
as we must suppose from the letters of Mary Lamb written at that time. 
In the July of the next year the Lambs again visited the Hazlitts at Win- 
terslow and Hazlitt acted as guide to the Lambs to Oxford and lilenheim 
on their return to London. Charles Lamb has written of this in his 
"Oxford in the Vacation" ("Essays of Elia"). See also "Memoirs of 
Hazlitt," I, 16S-175; also II, 229. 

After 1S19 Hazlitt spent much of his time at Winterslow Hut, where 
many of his essays were written (" Memoirs," II, 16) ; see Hazlitt, 
"On the Conversation of Authors," Works, VII, 24 ff. 

The following selection is from the preface to " Winterslow : Essays 
and Characters Written there by William Hazlitt. Collected by his Son " 
(1850) : 



Winterslow is a village of Wiltshire, between Salisbury and Andover, where 
my father, during a considerable portion of his life, spent several months of each 
year, latterly, at an ancient inn on the great western road, called Winterslow 
Hut. One of his chief attractions hither were the noble woods of Tytherleigh or 
Tudorleigh, round Norman Court. . . . Another feature was Clarendon Wood 
— whence the noble family of Qlarendon derived their title. ... In another 
direction, within easy distance, gleams Stonehenge, visited by my father, less 
perhaps for its historical associations than for its appeal to the imagination. . . . 
At no great distance, in another direction, are the fine pictures of Lord Rednor 
and somewhat further those of Wilton House. But the chief happiness was the 
thorough quiet of the place, the sole interruption of which was the passage, to 
and fro, of the London mails. . . . Among these [some London friends], deafly 
loved and honoured there as everywhere else, Charles and Maiy Lamb paid us 
frequent visits, rambling about all the time, thorough Londoners in a thoroughly 
country place, delighted and wondering and wondered at. 



NOTES 353 

127 17 "While Heav'n's chancel-vault": Keats, "Hyperion," II, 

36-38 : 

When the chill rain begins at shut of eve, 

In dull November, and their chancel-vault. 

The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night. 

127 23 Lady G.: Lady Grandison in " Sir Charles Grandison," by 
Samuel Richardson. 

129 16 " The man whose eye " : Wordsworth, " Lines left upon a Seat 
in a Yew-tree," II. 55-59- 

129 33 "To see the children " : Wordsworth, " Intimations of Immor- 
tality," 11. 170-17 1. 

130 6 Nicholson : William Nicholson (1753-1815), man of science 
and inventor. Besides his invention of many mathematical instruments, 
he wrote books on natural philosophy. 

130 9 "never ending, still beginning": Dryden, "Alexander's 
Feast," 1. 202. 

130 11 "the witchery of the soft blue sky": Wordsworth, "Peter 
Bell," 1. 265. 

131 12 Goldsmith : " Hazlitt had probably read the story in Northcote's 
' Life of Reynolds,' where the scene is laid at Antwerp. The incident 
really occurred at Lisle while Goldsmith was on his way to Paris with 
the Hornecks. We have Miss Horneck's authority for believing that 
the story as told by Northcote and here repeated by Hazlitt is much 
exaggerated. See Prior, ' Life of Goldsmith,' II, 290-291 ; Forster, 
'Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith,' II, 217; Boswell, 'Life of 
Johnson' (edited by Hill), I, 414 and note." See Works, VI, 477- 
478. 

131 17 I have seen a celebrated talker : was this Coleridge ? 
131 24 " Whose top to climb " : " Cymbeline," III, iii, 47. 

131 30 When Buonaparte got into his carriage : see Hazlitt, " Life of 
Napoleon," chaps, xliii and xliv. 

132 7 " the insolence of office " : " Hamlet," III, i, 73. 
132 19 "after the heart-aches" : ibid. Ill, i, 62. 

132 29 "a mouse": Webster, " The Duchess of Malfi," IV, ii, p. 207 
(Mermaid edition). 

133 12 says Rousseau : see " La Nouvelle Heloi'se," Partie V, Lettre 
III. This letter of Rousseau is especially interesting and seems to 
have been much liked by Hazlitt. 

133 13 A country-gentleman near Taunton: Taunton is a few miles 
south of Bristol. Flazlitt had been in Bristol in 179S on his visit to 
Coleridge and Wordsworth. 



354 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

133 17 "Some demon whisper'd " : Pope, "Moral Essays," IV, i6. 
The line in Pope is : 

Some demon whisper'd. Visto ! have a taste. 

133 18 A little Wilson : a picture by Wilson, the painter (see above, 
P- 337)- 

133 22 Canaletti: Antonio Canale or Canaletto (1697-1768), the Ve- 
netian painter, or Bernardo Bellotto (1724 .'-1780), his nephew. 

134 14 '" virgined it e'er since" : " Coriolanus," V, iii, 48. 

134 15 Hogarth : William Hogarth (1697-1764), celebrated English 
painter and especially famous for his realistic pictures of eighteenth- 
century life and manners. Hogarth is often mentioned by Hazlitt (see 
Works, Vol. VIII ; also Thackeray's " English Humourists of the 
Eighteenth Century"). 

134 15 Wilkie: Sir David Wilkie (1775-1814), Scottish genre painter. 
See Hazlitt's comparison of Hogarth and Wilkie in his "Comic Writers," 
Lecture VIL Works, Vol. VIII. 

134 17 the Clandestine Marriage : a comedy by George Colman, the 
elder, and David Garrick. It was first produced in 1766. 

134 30 "baby of a girl " : " Macbeth," III, iv, 106. 

134 33 "With what a waving air": B. W. Procter, " Mirandola," 
Act I, p. 20 (edition of 1821). 

135 7 "The fly that sips": Gay, "The Beggar's Opera," II, ii. 
From one of Macheath's songs. 

135 17 yet the tie is for life : Hazlitt's own experience does not seem 
quite consistent with this remark ; but this essay was written before he 
had succeeded in untying it; his divorce was granted in 1822. 

135 21 " Like life and death " : Lamb, " John Woodvil," II, ii : 

Better the dead were gather'd to the dead, 
Than death and life in disproportion meet. 

135 24 "For either" : " Paradise Lost," X, 898-908. 

136 2 the madman in Don Quixote : conclusion of the story of the shep- 
herdess Marcella : " This Chrysostome . . . loved well and was hated, 
he adored and was disdained, he begged pity of cruelty itself ; he strove 
to move obdurate marble ; pursued the winds ; made his moans to soli- 
tary deserts," etc. (Part I, chap. xiii). 

136 11 "I have not loved the world": Byron, " Childe Harold," 
canto iii, stanzas 11 3-1 14. 

136 note Shenstone and Gray : " Gray says the same thing in a letter 
to Norton Nicholls, June 24, 1769 (Works, edited by Gosse, III, 344)- 



NOTES 355 

... As to Gray's dislike to having his portrait prefixed to his works, 
see his letter to Horace Walpole, January, 1753 (Works, edited by 
Gosse, II, 233)." See Works, VI, 478. 

137 1 as Ben Jonson : examples of prologues where Jonson scolded his 
audience are those preceding " Volpone, the Fox " and " The Poetaster." 

137 9 the man in the Hartz mountains : the well-known mirage of the 
Brocken. See De Quincey, " Spectre of the Brocken." 

138 20 the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews : for an account of these 
magazines see introduction to L. E. Gates, " Selections from Francis 
Jeffrey," and Oliver Elton, "A Survey of English Literature, 1780- 
1830," I, 387 ff. 

138 22 Taylor and Hessey : the publishers of " Characters of 
Shakespear's Plays " (1817). See E. V. Lucas, " Life of Charles Lamb," 
11, 36-37 : 

Taylor and Hessey had a fair name as publishers, having issued among other 
works the poems of Keats. . . . Not only through want of imagination, but also 
by a policy of penuriousness, Taylor in time ruined this most promising property. 
His partner, James Augustus Hessey (1785-1870), who had less part in Lamb's 
life, was the father of the late Archdeacon Hessey, for whom and his brother, 
when at school, Lamb once wrote epigrams. Keats called him " Mistessy." 

The review appeared January, 1818. See Henley's introduction to 
Hazlitt (Works, Vol. I) : 

Both the characters and the English Poets [1818] were reviewed by Gifford in 
the Quarterly. The style of these " reviews " is abject ; the inspiration venal ; the 
matter the very dirt of the mind. Gifford hated Hazlitt for his politics, and set 
out to wither Hazlitt's repute as a man of letters. For the tremendous reprisal 
with which he was visited, the reader is referred to the Letter to William Gif- 
ford, Esq. \i he finds it over-savage, — probably, being of to-day, he will, — let him 
turn to his Qiiaiicrly, and consider, if he have the stomach, Gifford and the 
matter of offence. 

138 30 the Cockney School : according to the New English Dictionary, 
a cockney is one born in the city of London, or, as the old phrase was, 
" one born within the sound of Bow Bells." The term is particularly 
used to connote the characteristics in which the born Londoner is 
inferior to other Englishmen. The Cockney School was a nickname 
for a set of nineteenth-century writers belonging to London of whom 
Leigh Hunt was usually regarded as the best representative. See 
Lockhart's article on the subject in Blackwoods, October 28, 1817 ; 
see also Andrew Lang's " Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart." 

139 1 Poor Keats : this is a reference to the opinion formerly widely 
prevalent that the untimely death of Keats was caused by the bitter 



356 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

reviews of his poetry. The articles especially insulting were in Black- 
'cooods, August, 1818, probably by Lockhart, and in the Qna^-tcrly, by 
J. W. Croker, for April, but not published till September, 1818. 

139 3 "A bud bit " : " Romeo and Juliet," I, i, 137-139. 

139 10 " A huge-sized monster " : " Troilus and Cressida," III, iii, 147 : 

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes. 

139 31 Bub Doddington: George Bubb Doddington (1691-1762). See 
" The Diary of the Late George Bubb Doddington, Baron of Melcombe 
Regis"; from March 8, 1748-1749, to February 6, 1761, now first pub- 
lished by Henry Penruddocke Wyndham (1784). 

140 2 talk of the Scotch Novels: this essay was written in 1821 ; 
" Waverley," the first of Scott's novels, had appeared in 1814. 

140 25 Bolingbroke's Reflections on Exile : this passage is taken from 
perhaps his most famous work. See Works, I, 107-108 (edition of 1754). 



ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 

This essay first appeared in the first volume of "Table Talk" (1821). 

142 8 When Sterne: " Sentimental Journey," Character — Versailles. 

143 1!) "Those joys are lodg'd " : the source of this quotation is 
unknown. 

144 12 " The thoughts of which " : " Paradise Lost," IX, 912 : 

Yet loss of thee 
Would never from my heart. 

144 20 "What though the radiance": Wordsworth, "Intimations of 
Immortality," 11. i79seq. See Hazlitt's essay on Wordsworth in " Spirit 
of the Age," Works, lY, 270. 

144 2() " retrace its footsteps " : " Paradise Lost," XI, 329 : 

In yonder nether world where shall I seek 
Her bright appearance, or footsteps trace. 

144 28 "And see how dark": Wordsworth's "Lines written while 
sailing in a Boat at Evening." 

145 4 the last of the Reveries: these were written in 1775-1776. 
Lord Morley calls them the most perfect of Rousseau's compositions. 
Madame de Warens was the confidante of Rousseau. His first inter- 
view with her on the 21st of March, 1728, stamped itself forever on 
Rousseau's mind. When he says in the French sentence quoted by Haz- 
litt that it has beenyf/?r years since he first saw Madame de Warens, a 
comparison will show that, strictly speaking, it was only about forty-eight. 



NOTES 357 

145 in " all the life of life was flown " : Burns, "Lament for Glencairn" : 
For a' the life of Ufe is dead. 

145 22 lone brow of Norman Court : see " Memoirs," II, 14-15 : 

It was before his final settlement at Winterslow that he became in some man- 
ner acquainted with the Windhams of Norman Court, near Salisbury. It was the 
Honorable Charles Windham who lived there at that time with an only daughter, 
who was his heiress. 

At one time Charles Windham offered to place at Hazlitt's disposal 
an apartment or two at Norman Court. This has been made very clear 
by Mr. Rees in A^itcs and Queries, tenth series, X, 63. 

146 11) "running through the story " : " Othello," I, iii, 175 ff. 

147 14 Posth&c meminisse juvabit : Virgil, /Eneid, I, 203. 

148 20 " Calm contemplation " : Wordsworth, " Laodamia," 1. 72 : 

Calm pleasures there abide — majestic pains. 

149 18 " catch glimpses " : Wordsworth's Sonnet, "The World is too 
much with us " : 

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn. 

149 22 "I also was an Arcadian": see p. 112 and note; see JVotes 
and Qitci-ies, fourth series, I, 509, 561, &c. 

To one of his poems Stevenson gave the title, " Et tu in Arcadia 
Vixisti." 

149 2i) Que peu de chose: Voltaire, "Letter to Madame du Deffand," 
October 13, 1759. Marquise du Deffand was a distinguished French 
woman of the eighteenth century, and friend of Voltaire, D'Alembert, 
and Horace Walpole. 

149 32 Respice finem : a writer in A'otes and Queries, fifth series, VI, 
313, traces this Latin phrase back to a fable in " Fabulae Variorum 
Auctorum." 

151 5 "the high endeavour" : Cowper, "The Task," V, 901. 

151 10 " Oh God ! methinks " : "3 Henry VI," II, v, 21 f. 

152 10 "the tear forgot": Gray, "On a Distant Prospect of Eton 
College," stanza 5. 

153 19 it is recorded by Spence : "Anecdotes, Observations, and Char- 
acters of Books and Men collected from the Conversation of Mr. Pope," 
by Joseph Spence (edition<of 1S5S), pp. S7-SS : 

We almost always do better the second half hour than the first, because we 
grow warmer and warmer ; to such a degree at last, that when I have improviso'd 
a whole evening, I can never get a wink of sleep all the night after. 



358 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 



ON FAMILIAR STYLE 

This was the twenty-fourth essay of " Table Talk." 

In reading this essay and rereading it, one has the feeling that here 
are some of the best words ever written on the subject and written by 
a man who had thought of style and what it means. It is interesting to 
read in connection with this essay The Genteel Style of Writing, in 
Lamb's "The Last Essays of Elia." 

156 note Marlow's lines: Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), poet 
and dramatist. 

157 18 I never invented : Hazlitt's style is remarkable for its purity of 
diction. Probably he never used more than a half dozen words about 
the purity of which there was any question, and in each of those cases 
he makes a careful note of his usage. 

158 31 Spanish pieces of eight : the Spanish " dollar," or " piastre " 
(pieza de a ocho). Does one ever forget this coin after reading 
Stevenson's " Treasure Island " ? 

159 19 Burton : these are the seventeenth-century authors that Lamb 
seemed to like best and imitated. Hazlitt's comment on the quaint 
imitation is most apt. Compare what Lamb himself says about this 
peculiarity of his style in the preface to the " Last Essays." 

159 24 Elia : Lamb's first Elia essay appeared in the London Maga- 
zine for August, 1820, with the title, " Recollections of the South-Sea 
House." The history of Lamb's pseudonym is told in a letter to John 
Taylor, the publisher, in July, 1821 : 

Having a brother now there [at the South-Sea House] and doubting how he 
might retort certain descriptions in it, clapt down the name of Elia to it, which 
passed off pretty well, for Elia himself added the function of an author to that of 
a scrivener, like myself. ... I went the other day (not having seen him [Elia] 
for the year) to laugh over with him at my usurpation of his name, and found 
him alas ! no more than a name, for he died of consumption eleven months ago 
and I knew not of it. So the name has fairly devolved to me, I think, and 't is 
all he has left me. 

Mr. Lucas adds in a note : 

Mrs. Cowden Clarke records in a marginal note to her copy of Procter's 
" Memoirs " (which was recently lent to me) that Lamb once remarked that " Elia " 
formed an anagram of " a lie." 

See the account in Lucas, " Life of Lamb," II, 42 ff. 
159 29 "A well of native English": Spenser, "Faerie Queene," 
Book IV, canto ii, stanza 32 : 



NOTES 359 

Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled, 

On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled. 

159 32 Erasmus's Colloquies: Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536). His 
" Colloquia" (1524) are a series of dialogues written first for pupils and 
afterwards expanded into lively conversations on the topics of the day. 
In the sixteenth century these were read in the schools in England. See 
F. Seebohm, "Oxford Reformers." 

160 5 "What do you read? " : " Hamlet," II, ii, 193. 

160 23 Sermo humi obrepens: Horace, " Epistles," II, i, 250-251 : 

Nee sermones ego mallem 
Repentes per humum quam res componere gestas. 

161 1 Ancient Pistol : in Shakspere's " Merry Wives," " Henry IV," 
and " Henry V." 

161 5 " That strut and fret" : " Macbeth," V, v, 25. 

161 9 "And on their pens " : Waller and Glover suggest as the source 
of this quotation, " Paradise Lost," IV, 988 : 

And on his crest 
Sat Horror plumed, 

162 27 " It smiled, and it was cold ! " : Cowper, " The Task," V, 173- 

176: 

'T was transient in its nature, as in show 
'T was durable : as worthless as it seemed 
Intrinsically precious ; to the foot 
Treacherous and false : it smiled, and it was cold. 

ON GOING A JOURNEY 

This delightful essay was first published in the A^ew Mo7ithly Maga- 
zine for 1822 (IV, 73). The reader will instantly recall that more 
recent essay of Robert Louis Stevenson, " Walking Tours," which was 
evidently inspired by the Hazlitt essay. Compare also the spirit of 
Stevenson's essay, " An Apology for Idlers," with Hazlitt's passage on 
idlers at school, in Works, VI, 72. The sympathy between these two 
writers is noteworthy, as may be seen by a casual glance at some of 
the titles of their essays. Stevenson's plan to write a life of Hazlitt is 
apparent from a part of his letter to his friend, P. G. Hamerton : 

I am in treaty with Bentley for a life of Hazlitt. I hope it will not fall through, 
as I love the object, and appear to have found a publisher who loves it also. 
That I think makes things more pleasant. You know I am a fervent Hazlittite, I 
mean regarding him as the English writer who has had the scantiest justice. 



360 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

Besides which, I am anxious to write a biography ; really if I understand myself 
in quest of profit, I think it must be good to live with another man from birth 
to death. — " Letters" (edited by Colvin), I, 225-226. 

Why this project was not carried out is not known. 
It is interesting also to find in Rousseau such enthusiastic praise of 
walking : 

Never did I think so much, exist so much, be myself so much, as in the 
journeys I have made alone and on foot. The sight of the country, the succession 
of agreeable views, open air, good appetite, the freedom of the alehouse, the 
absence of everything that could make me feel dependence or recall me to my 
situation — all this sets my mind free, gives me greater boldness of thought. 
When I came to a place I only thought of eating, and when I left it I only 
thought of walking. — "Confessions," IV, 279 ff. 

163 5 "The fields his study": Bloomfield, "The Farmer's Boy," 
^^V//;--, 31. 
163 14 " a friend in my retreat " : Cowper, " Retirement," 11. 741-743. 
163 22 "May plume her feathers" : Milton, " Comus," 11. 378 ff. 

163 27 in a Tilbury : a gig or two-wheeled carriage without a top. It 
was named for the inventor, a coach builder of the early nineteenth 
century. 

164 8 sunken wrack : " Henry V," I, ii, 165. 

164 15 "leave me to my repose!": the refrain of the Prophetess 
in Gray, " The Descent of Odin." The line is quoted by Burke in 
"Letter to a Noble Lord" (Works, Bohn edition, V, 112): 

If all revolutionists were not proof against all caution, I should recommend it 
to their consideration, that no persons were ever known in history, cither sacred 
or profane, to vex the sepulchre, and by their sorceries to call up the prophetic 
dead, with any other event than the prediction of their own disastrous fate — 
" Leave me, oh leave me to repose." 

164 2!) " Out upon such half-faced fellowship " : "i Henry IV," I, iii, 208. 

165 2 "Let me have a companion": Stevenson, "Walking Tours." 

166 8 " give it an understanding " : " Hamlet," I, ii, 250. 

166 8 My old friend C : Coleridge. See the essay, " My First 

Acquaintance with Poets," p. 175 ; see also Introduction, p. xvi. 

166 12 "He talked far above singing": Beaumont and Fletcher, 
" Philaster," V, 5 : 

I did hear you talk far above singing. 

166 16 "that fine madness " : Drayton, " Censure of Poets": 

For that fine madness still he did retain, 
Which rightly should possess a Poet's brain. 



NOTES 361 

166 20 "Here be woods": "The Faithful Shepherdess" (1609), by 
John Fletcher (i 579-1625), I, iii, 27-43. 

167 8 L : Lamb. See Hazlitt's splendid characterization of Lamb 

in " Spirit of the Age," Works, IV, 362 ff. 

167 20 "take one's ease " : " i Henry IV," III, iii, 93 : 

Falstaff. Shall not I take mine ease in mine inn, but I shall have my pocket 
picked ? 

167 27 " The cups that cheer " : Cowper, " The Task," IV, 39-40. 

167 30 Sancho : Sancho Panza, " the round, selfish and self-important " 
squire of Don Quixote in Cervantes's romance of that name. The 
reference here is to " Don Quixote," Part II, chap. xlix. 

168 1 Procul : this passage is quoted often by Hazlitt. The complete 
lines are : 

" Procul o, procul este, profani," 
Conclamat vates, '' totoque absistite luco." /Eneid, VI, 258. 

" Retire hence, retire, ye profane, and quit entirely the sacred grove." 

This was the regular warning in religious ceremonies to the impure 
or uninitiated to keep aloof, lest the ceremony be defiled. 
168 21 " unhoused free condition" : '" Othello," I, ii, 26. 

168 2.'? " lord of one's self": Dryden, "To my Honour'd Kinsman, 
John Driden," 1. 18 : 

Lord of your self, uncumber'd with a Wife. 

169 10 St. Neot's : a town near Peterborough. It will be remembered 
that Hazlitt had walked into this part of the country some time near 
1796. See "The Pictures at Burleigh House," Works, IX, 63. Also 
see Introduction, p. xv. 

169 11 Gribelin's engravings of the Cartoons: in 1707 Gribelin com- 
pleted a set of seven small plates of the cartoons of Raphael with a title- 
page composed of a sectional view of the apartment at Hampton Court 
in which they were then placed. This series met with great success. 

169 13 Westall : Richard Westall (1765-1836), a prominent historical 
painter. Early in the nineteenth century he devoted himself chiefly to 
designs for illustration of editions of the English poets. His pictures in 
" Pilgrim's Progress" and " Don Quixote " are very much admired. 

169 19 Paul and Virginia ... at an inn at Bridgewater : " Paul et Vir- 
ginie," by Bernardin de Saint Pierre (1737-1814), appeared in 1788. It 
was translated into English in 1796 by H. M. Williams. 

169 22 Camilla: this novel by Fanny Burney was published in 1796. 
Though a literary failure, it enabled the author to build a cottage for 
herself, called Camilla Cottage. 



362 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

169 23 New Eloise ... at the inn at Llangollen : see the essay " My 
First Acquaintance with Poets," p. 186. Rousseau's " New Heloi'se " 
was finished in 1759 and pubHshed early in 1761. 

169 25 St. Preux describes his feelings : Rousseau, " La Nouvelle 
Heloise," Partie IV, Lettre XVIL 

169 34 "green upland swells": Coleridge, "Ode on the Departing 
Year," VIL 4-6. 

170 13 "The beautiful is vanished": Coleridge, "The Death of 
Wallenstein," V, i. 

171 12 "Beyond Hyde Park": "The Man of Mode" (1676), by Sir 
George Etheredge (1635 ?-i69i), Act V, scene ii, p. 361 (edited by 
Verity) : 

Donniant to Harriet. Whate'er you say, I know all beyond Hyde Park 's a 
desert to you, and that no gallantry can draw you further. 

See also " On Londoners and Country People," Works, VIL 67. 

171 12 Sir Topling Flutter : should be Sir Fopling Flutter. 

172 K) " The mind is its own place " : " Paradise Lost," I, 254. 

172 18 I once took a party : see Introduction, p. xxv ; also " On the 
Conversation of Authors," Works, VII, 24-44; "Memoirs," I, 172; 
Lamb's " Letters," August 9, 1819 ; Lucas, " Life of Charles Lamb," 
I, 300. 

172 21 "'With glistering spires " : " Paradise Lost," III, 550. 

172 25 Ciceroni : this is the plural form for cicetvne, the Italian word 
for " guide," so named on account of the proverbial talkativeness of 
those who describe the antiquities and curiosities of museums. 

173 10 when I first set my foot : " Notes of a Journey through France 
and Italy," Works, IX, 302 : 

We returned by way of St. Omers and Calais. I wished to see Calais once 
more, for it was there I first landed in France twenty years ago. 

This was the occasion of his going to Paris (October, 1802) to study 
at the Louvre. 

173 33 Dr. Johnson remarked : Boswell's " Life " (edited by Hill), III, 
301 : 

So it is in travelling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring 
home knowledge. 

Also 

Time may be employed to more advantage from nineteen to twenty-four almost 
in any way than in travelling ; when you set travelling against mere negation, 
against doing nothing, it is better to be sure, but how much more would a young 



NOTES 363 

man improve were he to study during those years. . . . How little does travelling 
supply to the conversation of any man who has travelled ; how little to Beauclerk 
(Boswell's "Life" (edited by Hill), III, 352). 

174 8 "Out of my country": at present no one has been able to 
identif)' this quotation. 

r 
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 

The germ of this essay is " Mr. Coleridge's Lay-Sermon, to the 
editor of the Exatfiiner,''^ January 12, 18 17. It was reprinted in " Polit- 
ical Essays" (1819). Then the essay, as we have it, was printed in 
Leigh Hunt's review " The Liberal : Verse and Prose from the South " 
(1823) and this was then repubhshed by Hazlitt's son in "Literary 
Remains" (1836), II, 359-397- Our text is reprinted from "The 
Liberal" which is the form of the essay left by Hazlitt. 

This essay has always been admired by readers of Hazlitt. For its 
account of the first great influence upon Hazlitt's literary life, and for 
its picture of Coleridge and Wordsworth at the very beginning of their 
poetic career, as well as for the enthusiasm of its style, it deserves a high 
place among the personal essays of our literature. In one of the best 
criticisms of Hazlitt, Professor Winchester has called it " the most de- 
lightful essay of personal reminiscence in the English language." 

175 1 W m : Wem, a village near Shrewsbury. See Introduction, 

pp. xii ff. 

175 3 " dreaded name of Demogorgon " : " Paradise Lost," II, 964-965. 
175 18 "fluttering the proud Salopians ^^ : " Coriolanus," V, vi, 115: 

That, like an eagle in a dove-cote, I 
Flutter'd your Volscians in Corioli. 

Shrewsbury is the chief town of Shropshire or Salop, from the old 
Latin name Salopia. Hence Hazlitt's name for the inhabitants of 
Shrewsbury. 

175 23 "High-born Hoel's harp " : Gray, " The Bard," 1. 28. 

176 6 " With Styx " : Pope, " Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," 11. 90-91 : 

Tho' fate had fast bound her 
With Styx nine times round her. 

Mr. Rowe was the Unitarian minister at Shrewsbury ; later in the 
year he took the church at Bristol. Whitchurch is a small town about 
nine miles north of Wem, which is about ten miles from Shrewsbury. 

176 21 the fires in the Agiimemnon : used as the beacon in the play by 
^schylus to announce the fall of Troy. 



364 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

177 2 " n y a des impressions" : Rousseau, " Confessions " : 

There are impressions that neither times nor circumstances can efface. Were 
I enabled to live whole ages, the sweet days of my youth could not revive for me, 
nor ever be obliterated in my memory. 

177 5 When I got there : the little church on High Street, Shrewsbury, 
is still used by the Unitarian congregation. Though altered both within 
and without, it retains the same pulpit and benches, though the backs 
of the pews have been cut down. On the wall at the rear of the pulpit 
is the decree of King George III affording protection to the worship- 
ers. This was secured by the members after the outrages practiced 
upon Priestley. Charles Darwin was a member of this church. 

177 7 his text: John vi, 15. 

177 14 " of one crying " : Matthew iii, 3-4. 

177 2(5 "as though he should never be old": Sidney's "Arcadia," 
Lib. L 

177 32 "Such were the notes": Pope, "Epistle to Robert, Earl of 
Oxford," 1. I : 

Such were the notes thy once-loved Poet sung, 
Till Death untimely stopp'd his tuneful tongue. 

178 12 " Like to that sanguine " : " Lycidas," 1. 106. 

178 25 "As are the children": Thomson, "The Castle of Indo- 
lence," II, stanza xxxiii. 

178 28 " A certain tender " : ibid. I, 57. 

178 30 Murillo (161S-1682) and Velasquez (1599-1660): both were 
celebrated Spanish painters. 

179 1() Coleridge was at that time (1798): for independence of his 
views Coleridge had been expelled from Cambridge and had entered a 
regiment of dragoons. Encouraged by the Captain, who had found him 
reading Plato in Greek, Coleridge left the army and entered into the 
scheme of the Pantisocracy. When this plan failed, the young enthusi- 
ast began a series of meetings in various English cities for the purpose 
of disseminating his views on politics and religion. In that capacity he 
had become well known, and it is not strange that the people at 
Shrewsbury eagerly awaited his coming. 

179 10 poor Irish lad : Hazlitt's father had been born in Tipperary 
County, Ireland ; he was sent to Glasgow at the age of nineteen (1756) 
where he studied under Adam Smith (1723-1790), the celebrated 
Scottish political economist. For an account of the life of Hazlitt's 
father, see W. C. Hazlitt, " Four Generations of a Literary Family." 



NOTES 365 

181 9 Mary Wolstonecraft (i 759-1797) : wife of William Godwin and 
mother of the second wife of Shelley. She was the author of the 
"Vindication of the Rights of Women" (1792). 

181 10 Mackintosh: Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), philosopher 
and historian. In 1791 he published "Vindiciae Gallicae " in answer 
to Burke's " Reflections on the Revolution in France." See Hazlitt's 
essay in the " Spirit of the Age," Works, IV, 279. 

182 24 making him an offer: Coleridge preached at Shrewsbury on 
Sunday, January 14, 17S9. On the loth, Josiah Wedgwood had written : 
" After what my brother Thomas has written I have only to state the 
proposal we wish to make to you. It is that you shall accept an annuity 
for life of ;if 150 to be regularly paid by us, no condition whatsoever 
being annexed to it." See Mrs. Henry Sandford, " Thomas Poole and 
His Friends," I, 236-23S ; also R. B. Witchfield, " Life of Tom Wedg- 
wood " (1903). 

This letter reached Stowey (Coleridge's home) on Saturday the 13th, 
when Coleridge was on his way to Shrewsbury. Tom Poole took 
charge of the letter and forwarded it or sent word of its contents. 
Coleridge decided to accept the gift, and on the 30th wrote to Thelwall, 
" Astonished, agitated and feeling as I could not help feeling, I accepted 
the offer in the same worthy spirit in which it was made." On his 
return from Shrewsbury he went to Tom Poole's house to meet Tom 
Wedgwood " to make his personal acknowledgments of the offer of the 
annuity which he had just made up his mind to accept." 

182 30 Deva : the ancient Latin name for the Dee, a river of North 
Wales which flows past Chester into the Irish Sea. 

183 3 Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains : in " Pilgrim's Progress " 
Christian and Hopeful come to the Shepherds of the Delectable Moun- 
tains immediately after they have escaped from Giant Despair. 

183 13 Cassandra: in "Cassandre" by La Calprenede. "I confess I 
have read some of these fabulous folios formerly with no small degree 
of delight and breathless anxiety, particularly that of 'Cassandra.'" 
Works, XII, 61. 

183 21 "Sounding on his way": Chaucer's description of the Mer- 
chant, " Prologue," 1. 275. 

183 34 Hume . . . Essay on Miracles: David Hume (1711-1776), the 
famous Scottish philosopher and historian, known chiefly as the ex- 
pounder of skeptical views in philosophy. His great work, " Treatise on 
Human Nature," was published, Vols. I and II in 1739, Vol. Ill in 1740. 

184 1 South's Sermons : Robert South (1634-1716), the noted English 
divine who began a controversy on the Trinity, which aroused such 
bitterness that the king intervened. 



366 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

184 2 Credat Judaeus Apella : Horace, "Satires," I, v, loo: 

Credat ludaeus Apella, 
Non ego. 

Let the Jew Apella believe it, I will not. 

See Notes and Queries, ninth series. III, 326; VII, 240. 

184 10 Essay on Vision : by George Berkeley (1685-1753), Irish bishop. 
His " Essay on Vision " was published in 1709 ; '" Theory of Matter and 
Spirit" in 1733. The aim of Berkeley throughout his writings is to 
attack materialism, and he is therefore opposed to Hobbes. 

184 14 " Thus I confute him " : Boswell, " Life " (edited by Hill), I, 471. 

184 16 Tom Paine: Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Anglo-American 
political writer and freethinker. He supported the cause of the Ameri- 
can Colonies and published "Rights of Man" in 1791-1792. For this 
he was outlawed from England. 

184 20 Bishop Butler : Joseph Butler (1692-17 52), English theologian, 
bishop of Bristol and of Durham. His most famous work was " The 
Analogy of Religion" (1736). " Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls 
Chapel" (1726) is referred to in this passage. 

184 32 Natural Disinterestedness : printed by Hazlitt in 1805, though 
he had been thinking it over for years. 

185 16 Sidney: besides Sidney's prose, it will be remembered that he 
wrote the famous sonnet sequence, "Astrophel and Stella" (1591). 

185 21 Paley : William Paley (1743-1805), English theologian and 
philosopher. 

185 29 " Kind and affable " : " Paradise Lost," VIII, 648-650. 

186 5 he has somewhere told himself : " Biographia Literaria," chap. x. 
186 13 that other Vision of Judgment : see an account in the Edin- 
burgh Review, June, 1822 : 

This was by Byron, published in the first number of Leigh Hunt's Liberal. 
The Bridge-Street Association, or Gang as it was called by its enemies, was 
founded in 182 1 to support the laws for suppressing seditious publications and for 
defending the country from the fatal influence of disloyalty and sedition. 

186 32 Llangollen Vale : in Wales, about thirty-six miles from Wem. 

186 34 Ode on the Departing Year : this poem was composed in Decem- 
ber 23-26, 1796. It appeared in an abridged form on December 31, 
and later complete in a quarto text. 

187 7 thought of Tom Jones : " Tom Jones," Book X, chap. v. This 
was one of Hazlitt's favorite books. 

187 9 at Tewkesbury : according to his essay, " On Going a Journey," 
it was at Bridgewater. See p. 169. 



NOTES 367 

187 10 Paul and Virginia: this story had appeared in 1788. 

187 22 Poems on ^AciVam/np'o//'/flCCs; these are seven poems by Words- 
worth, written about Grasmere, Keswick, and people and places near by. 

188 5 I saw it but the other day : probably on one of his excursions 
out of Salisbury, while he was living and writing at Winterslow. 

188 8 Coleridge took me over : that is, from Nether Stowey to Alfoxden. 

188 10 a friend of the poet's : in 1797 Wordsworth had moved to Al- 
foxden, a " large mansion in a large park with seventy head of deer." 
Hazlitt is mistaken. Wordsworth paid £2^ a year for Alfoxden. See 
Mrs. Sandford, "Thomas Poole and his Friends," I, 225. Early in 
that year Coleridge had moved to Nether Stowey in Somersetshire. 
In June at the little village of Racedown, Dorsetshire, Coleridge visited 
Wordsworth. In July the Wordsworths returned the visit and in August 
they took the neighboring country house of Alfoxden. 

188 17 the Lyrical Ballads: these famous poems appeared in the 
autumn of 1798, before Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Dorothy Words- 
worth left for Germany on the sixteenth of September. In 1817 Coleridge 
reissued his poems already published, with the title " Sibylline Leaves." 

188 25 " hear the loud stag speak " : no one has thus far succeeded in 
pointing out the source of this quotation. 

189 17 " In spite of pride " : Pope, " Essay on Man," I, 293. 
189 22 " While yet " : Thomson, " The Seasons," Sj>nn^, 18. 

189 25 "" Of Providence " : " Paradise Lost," II, 559-560. 

190 21 Chantry's bust: this was executed before 1821 and is now at 
Coleorton. 

190 23 Haydon's head of him : a portrait by Haydon introduced into 
his " Christ's Entry into Jerusalem." This picture is now in the Roman 
Catholic Cathedral at Cincinnati. 

190 33 the Castle Spectre: by " Monk " Lewis (1775-1S18) ; this play 
had been produced at Drury Lane, December 14, 1797. Wordsworth saw 
it in the following spring. 

191 1 ad captandum merit : a quality for catching popular applause. 
191 14 " his face was as a book*" : " Macbeth," I, v, 63. 

191 34 Tom Poole: Thomas Poole (1765-1837) was a Bristol tanner 
who has become famous for his kindness to authors, especially Coleridge 
and Wordsworth. A delightful biography has been written by , his 
daughter, Mrs. Henry Sandford, " Thomas Poole and his Friends," 
2 vols. (1888). 

192 8 " followed in the chace " : " Othello," II, iii, 370. 

192 19 followed Coleridge into Germany : after the publication of the 
" Lyrical Ballads," Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Dorothy Wordsworth 



368 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

went to Germany in September of the same year, 179S. To all, this was 
a most important event. 

192 22 Sir Walter Scott's : Hazlitt probably refers to the banquet 
given to George IV by the magistrates of Edinburgh, August 24, 1822. 

192 22 Mr. Blackwood's: William Blackwood (1776-1834), Scotch 
publisher and bookseller, founder and editor of Blackwood's EJiii- 
bin-gh Alagazine^ April i, 18 17. 

192 28 Gasper Poussin (1613-1675) : French landscape painter, 
brother-in-law and pupil of Nicolas Poussin. 

192 2S Domenichino : or Domenico Zampieri (15S1-1641), noted Italian 
painter, famous for the correctness of his design. 

193 19 Gianfs Causeway : the celebrated rock formation on the north 
coast of Ireland. 

193 2(i Death of Abel : by Solomon Gessner (1730-1788), who was a 
Swiss idyllic poet and landscape painter. His best-known piece is " Tod 
Abels" (1758), a prose idyl. 

193 34 Seasons: "The Seasons," by James Thomson, appeared 1726- 
1730. See Ilazlitt's criticism on Thomson and Cowper, " Lectures on 
English Poets," Lecture V, Works, V, 85. 

194 27 Caleb Williams : famous political novel by William Godwin 
(1756-1836), published in 1794. Godwin was one of the important men 
of his time and associated with all the chief writers, especially Hazlitt, 
Lamb, the LIunts, Shelley. See Hazlitt's essay in the " Spirit of the 
Age," Works, IV, 200. See also C. Kegan Paul, "William Godwin, 
his Friends and Contemporaries" (i'876). 

194 note Buffamalco : Buonamico Buffalmacco (1311-1351), Floren- 
tine painter, celebrated for his jests in Boccaccio's " Decameron." See 
Vasari, " Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects." 

195 2 " ribbed sea-sands " : " Ancient Mariner," 11. 224-227 : 

I fear thee, ancient Mariner ! 

I fear thy skinny hand 

And thou art long and lank, and brown. 

As is the ribbed sea-sand. 

In a note Coleridge says, " For the last two lines of this stanza I am 
indebted to Mr. Wordsworth." 

195 '.'A Remorse : this play was produced at Drury Lane, January 23, 
1S13, and was fairly successful. It ran for twenty nights. For his 
share Coleridge received ;i^4oo. 

196 1 Mr. Elliston: Robert William Elliston (1774-1831). He was a 
favorite actor of Lamb's and played the title part in Lamb's farce 



NOTES 369 

"Mr. H.," which failed on December 10, 1S06. See Lamb's Elia essay 
called " Ellistoniana." 

196 11 It was at Godwin's : the meeting between Ilazlitt and Lamb 
took place probably in the early months of 1S04 and was brought about 
by Coleridge. See Lucas, " Life of Lamb," I, 341. 

196 12 Holcroft : Thomas Ilolcroft (1745-1809), English dramatist, 
miscellaneous writer, and actor. Because he embraced the principles of 
the French Revolution he was indicted for high treason and imprisoned 
for a short time. Hazlitt wrote a life of him. See Works, II, 1-281. 

196 17 "But there is matter": Wordsworth, " Hart- Leap Well," 

11. 95-96 : 

But there is matter for a second rhyme, 

And I to this would add another tale. 



MERRY ENGLAND 

This essay first appeared in the A'cto Monthly Magazine for Decem- 
ber, 1825 ; it was published in " Sketches and Essays" {1839). 

197 1 "St. George for merry England": St. George was recognized 
as the patron saint of England from the time of Edward III (1327-1377), 
probably because of his being adopted as patron of the Order of the 
Garter. The phrase "merry England" appears in "Cursor Mundi," 
1300-1400; also in "A Lytell Geste of Robin Ilood." See Azotes and 
Queries, tenth series, X, 88. 

197 3 Utlucus: the phrase is //tens a non liicendo, "a light from its not 
shining." The phrase is used to mark an absurd or discordant etymology. 
Luciis, " a grove," is derived from Ineere, " to shine," because the rays 
of the sun are supposed rarely to shine through its foliage. 

197 24 Silence: " 2 Henry IV," V, iii, 42. 

197 28 "there were pippins " : " Merry Wives," I, ii, 12. 

198 4 "Continents have most": Hobbes, "Human Nature," Works 
(edited by Molesworth), IV, 50. 

198 2G "They," says Froissart: also quoted in "The Round Table." 
See Works, I, 431. This well-known saying is wrongly attributed to 
Froissart. See A'oies and Qiteries for 1863 and subsequent years. 

199 (J BHndman's-buff : see Strutt, "Sports and Pastimes" (edited by 
Hone, 183S), p. 392. 

199 G hunt-the-slipper: ibid. p. 387. 
199 7 hot-cockles : ibid. p. 393. 

From the French hautes-coquilles, a play in which one kneels, and covering 
his eyes lays his head in another's lap and guesses who struck him. 



370 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

The New English Dictionary refuses to accept this derivation of the 
word, but suggests no other. 

199 7 snap-dragon: ibid. p. 397. 

199 21 Drury-lane or Covent-garden : the first theater of which we have 
record in Drury Lane was The Cockpit, where, in the days of the Com- 
monwealth, actors attempted surreptitiously to give plays. Then a more 
convenient building was erected in the same street and opened April 8, 
1663. In January, 1671-1672, this theater took fire and was entirely de- 
stroyed. The new theater, under the direction of Sir Christopher Wren, 
was built and opened March 26, 1674. In 1791 it was taken down so that a 
more commodious building might be erected on the same site. This new 
theater was opened on the twelfth of March, 1794. It was destroyed by 
fire on February 24, 1809. . . . The incident is well known of Sheridan, its 
manager, refusing to postpone a debate in the House of Commons when 
the fire was discovered. The new theater was reopened in October, 1812. 

The Covent Garden Theater was opened for its first play on October 
2, 1732. It was burned on September 20, 1808. The corner stone of the 
new building was laid with great ceremony by the Prince of Wales on 
December 31 of the same year. For a sketch of these two theaters in 
the eighteenth century, see introduction to Baker's " Biographia Dra- 
matica " (18 12). It is no exaggeration to say that the history of these 
two theaters from the Restoration to the nineteenth century, with the ac- 
count of their managers and actors, is the story of dramatic production 
in England during that time. See also Colley Cibber's "Apology " (1740). 

199 o3 Jack-o'-the-Green : Strutt, p. 358 : 

The Jack in the Green is a piece of pageantry consisting of a hollow frame 
of wood or wicker-work, made in the form of a sugar loaf, but open at the bottom 
and sufficiently large and high to receive a man. The frame is covered with green 
leaves and bunches of flowers interwoven with each other, so that the man within 
may be completely concealed, who dances with his companions, and the populace 
are mightily pleased with the oddity of the moving pyramid. 

200 6 " Long Robinson " . . . OW Lord's; Lord's is the famous cricket 
ground in England. A few years ago when it was proposed to build a 
tram line through the ground, a peer in Parliament in outspoken opposi- 
tion exclaimed, " Lord's is one of the most sacred spots in England." 
In 1787 the first Lord's ground was laid off on the site of what is now 
Dorset Square ; it was again moved in 181 1, and to the present place in 
1814, in St. John's Wood, London. It took the name from Thomas Lord, 
a prominent cricketer and keeper of grounds in the eighteenth century. 

200 24 the joy of the ring : see Hazlitt's famous essay, " The Fight," 
Works, XII, I. 



NOTES 371 

200 note "passage of arms at Ashby " : see Scott, " Ivanhoe," 
chaps, vii and viii. 

201 7 "A cry more tuneable" : "Midsummer Night's Dream," IV, i, 
121. Note that the word " tuneable " here means musical. 

201 17 Theseus and Pirithous : two close friends famous in classic my- 
thology. With the assistance of Pirithous, Theseus carried off Helen 
from Sparta. Then in the attempt of Pirithous to take away Proserpine, 
Pluto seized them both and fastened them to a rock. 

201 24 "brothers of the angle" : Walton, "Compleat Angler," Part I, 
chap. i. Elsewhere Hazlitt writes : 

Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-poem, Walton's Com- 
plete Angler. 

See Works, V, 98-99 ; see also essay, " On Egotism," Works, VII, 161. 

201 note This was the reason the French : see Hazlitt's account of 
the battle of Waterloo in his " Life of Napoleon," chap. Ivi. 

202 29 Will Wimble : see '" On Periodical Essayists," p. 18. 

202 31 The Cockney character : see above, p. 355. 

203 16 Book of Sports : " The King's Maiesties Declaration to his 
Subjects concerning lawfull Sports to be used," published by James I 
in 1618 and reissued by his son in 1633. 

203 21 " And e'en on Sunday " : Burns, "Tam O'Shanter," 11. 27-28. 

203 29 Bartholomew-Fair : this was a fair or market held at West 
Smithfield, London, on St. Bartholomew's Day (24 August O.S.). It 
continued from 1133 till 1S55 when it was discontinued. For a full and 
interesting account of the Fair see H. Morley, " Memoirs of Bartholomew 
Fair." In his play of the same name, Ben Jonson has many a gibe at 
the Puritans of his day. 

204 7 Gilray's shop-window : Miss Humphrey's shop, 29 St. James's 
Street, where the works of James Gilray (1757-1815), the caricaturist, 
were on view. In the first number of the Anti-Jacobin Reviexv and Alaga- 
zine, August i, 1798, appeared a cartoon of Gilray, which became very fa- 
mous. The picture shows a group of prominent English revolutionists — 
Duke of Bedford, Coleridge, Southey, Lloyd, and Lamb, the last two rep- 
resented by a toad and a frog. See Lucas, " Life of Charles Lamb," I, 136. 

204 note Shrovetide : Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent, a 
great time for sports of all kinds. 

206 8 Byron was in the habit: see " Byron's Letters and Journals" 
(edited by Prothero), V, 528, 533-535. 559 ff- 

206 20 "That under Heaven" : " Faerie Queene," Book I, canto vii, 
stanza 32. 



IJ2 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

207 !) Childe Harold: the first two cantos of "Childe Harold" were 
published in 1812, the third in 1816, the fourth in 1818. "Don Juan," 
cantos i and ii in 1819; iii-vini82i; vi-xiv in 1823; xv, xvi in 1824. 

208 2 Lubin Log or Tony Lumpkin : Tony Lumpkin in Goldsmith's 
" She Stoops to Conquer " ; Lubin Log in " Love, Law and Physic," 
by James Kenney (1780-1849). 

208 20 ff. Mrs. Jordan : Mrs. Jordan was the assumed name of Dorothy 
Bland (i 762-1862), an Irish actress, distinguished for her Rosalind and 
Viola. Thomas King (1730-1805). John Bannister (1760-1836) was a 
pupil of David Garrick. His retirement from the stage at Drury Lane 
was described by Hazlitt in the Examiner, June 4, 181 5, Works, VIII, 
229. Richard Suett (1755-1805) had a part in the first play which 
Hazlitt ever saw (Introduction, pp. xiv and xliv). Joseph Munden (1758- 
1832). Charles Lamb called him the king of broad comedy. James 
William Dodd (i 730-1805), William Parsons (i 736-1 795), John Emery 
(1777-1822), Elizabeth Farren (1759 ?-iS29). 

208 27 ff. Nell, &c. : Nell in " The Devil to Pay, or The Wives Meta- 
morphosed," by Coffey, a part taken by Mrs. Jordan ; Little Pickle in 
"The Spoiled Child"; Touchstone in "As You Like It"; Sir Peter 
Teazle in " School for Scandal," by Sheridan ; Lenitive in " The Prize," 
by Prince Hoare ; Lingo in " The Agreeable Surprise," by O'Keefe ; 
Crabtree in " School for Scandal," by Sheridan ; Nipperkin in " Sprigs 
of Laurel"; Dornton in "The Road to Ruin," a comedy in five acts by 
Thomas Holcroft; Ranger in "The Suspicious Husband" (1747), by 
Hoadly; Copper Captain in " Rule a Wife and Have a Wife," by Fletcher; 
Lord Sands in Shakspere's " King Henry VIII " ; Filch in Gay's " Beg- 
gar's Opera"; Moses in "School for Scandal"; Acres in Sheridan's 
" The Rivals " ; Elbow in Shakspere's " Measure for Measure " ; Hodge 
in "Love in a Village" (1763), a comic opera by Isaac Bickerstaff; 
Flora in " The Wonder," by Mrs. Centlivre ; Duenna in " Duenna " 
(1775), a three-act comic opera by Sheridan; Lady Teazle in " School 
for Scandal"; Lady Grace in "The Provoked Husband, or A Journey 
to London," by Vanbrugh and Cibber. 

209 it Roderick Random : Smollett's first story (174S). 

209 10 Hogarth's prints : see Hazlitt's essay on that subject in Works, 
L 25. 

209 K; "What 's our Britain " : " Cymbeline," III, iv, 138 : 

I' the world's volume 
Our Britain seems as of it, but not in 't ; 
In a great pool, a swan's nest, prithee, think 
There 's livers out of Britain, 



NOTES 373 

209 22 Mrs. Abington : Frances Abington (1737-1815), flower seller, 
street singer, cook maid, and comedy queen. Hazlitt wrote : 

I would rather have seen Mrs. Abington's Millamant than any Rosalind that 
ever appeared on the stage. 

See " Lectures on Comic Writers," Works, VIII, 74. 

209 22 Mademoiselle Mars: Anne Fran9oise Boutet-Monvel (1779- 
1847), the clever impersonator of Moliere's heroines at the Theatre 
Fran9ais. Her father, Montet, was an actor, and her mother, Mars, an 
actress. 

210 7 As I write this : this paper was written apparently at Vevey in 
the summer of 1825. See "Memoirs," Vol. II, chap. xv. See also 
Works, IX, 281. 

310 13 "And gaudy butterflies" : from one of Polly's songs in "The 
Beggar's Opera," Act I, scene i. 

OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 

This essay appeared first in the Nezu Mo7tthly Magazine for January, 
1826; it was republished in " Literary Remains" (1836) and in " Win- 
terslow" (1850). 

This essay should be read in connection with the two in " The Plain 
Speaker," "On the Conversation of Authors." 

My attention has been called by Mr. J. Rogers Rees of Salisbury, 
England, to what is certainly the source of the idea of this paper. In 
1768 there appeared a work by Abraham Tucker, " The Light of Nature 
Pursued by Edward Search." In 1807 Hazlitt published an abridgment 
of this very popular work. The twenty-third chapter of Vol. II had the 
heading, " The Vision," and began as follows : 

One day after having my thoughts intent all the morning upon the subject of 
the two foregoing chapters, I went out in the evening to a neighbor's house to 
recreate myself with a game at cards. . . . And every one fell to consider how 
he might best gratify his curiosity, if he were possessed of that art [necromancy], 
what persons he should wake from the shades and what questions he should put 
to them. 

Then are summoned the shades of Locke, Newton, and others men- 
tioned by Hazlitt in his delightful essay. 

212 1. " Come like shadows " : " Macbeth," IV, i, 1 1 1. 

212 2 B : Charles Lamb. This essay attempts to describe a 

conversation which took place at one of Lamb's "Wednesdays" at 16 
Mitre Court Buildings, where Charles Lamb and his sister Mary lived 



374 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

from 1801 to 1809. Though IlazHtt says this discussion took place 
"twenty years ago," which would be about 1806, Mr. Lucas thinks it 
may have been as late as 1814. See his " Life of Lamb," I, 3S0. 

212 3 Guy Faux: Guy Fawkes (i 570-1 606). See Hazlitt's excellent 
articles on him, Works, XI, 317-334; three papers that appeared in 
the Examiner, November 11, 18, 25, 1821. The unsuccessful attempt 
of Fawkes to set fire to the House of Parliament (November 5, 1605) 
started the celebration which is observed every year. In every town 
and village of England Fawkes is burned in effigy. The festivities of 
the day resemble those of the Fourth of July in America. 

212 7 "Never so sure our rapture " : Pope, " Moral Essays," II, 51. 

212 17 A — : William Ayrton (1777-1858), the musician and musi- 
cal critic, director of music at King's Theater and editor of Charles 
Knight's Musical Library. Hazlitt called him " the Will Honeycomb of 
our set." He was a friend of the Burneys. See Lucas, " Life of Lamb," 
I, 237 ff. 

213 8 Kneller's portraits : the portrait of Newton is at Kade, and his 
best portrait of Locke is at Christ College, Oxford. 

213 21 Sir Thomas Brown (i 605-1 682) : one of Charles Lamb's favor- 
ite writers, author of " Religio Medici" (1642) and " Hydriotaphia or 
Urn Burial" (1658). See the letter, probably by Mitford, quoted in 
Lucas, " Life of Lamb," II, 168. 

213 21 Fulke Greville (i 554-1628) : first Lord Brooke. He was a poet 
and friend of Queen Elizabeth and of Sir Philip Sidney whose life he 
wrote. He held important positions, including that of Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. Hazlitt often mentions him in his works. 

214 8 " And call up him who left half-told " : " II Penseroso," 11. 109- 

IIO. 

214 28 Dr. Donne: John Donne (1573-1631), one of the so-called 
metaphysical poets, to whom we are largely indebted for the use of 
conceits in the seventeenth century. See the edition of his poems by 
E. K. Chambers in the Muses Library. 

214 33 beauty of the portrait : see note on p. 276, Vol. I, " Memoirs 
of Hazlitt": 

It was probably the edition of 1669, 12 mo ; at least that was the one Lamb had. 
There were in it many notes by Coleridge, and this memorandum : " I shall die 
soon, my dear Charles Lamb, and then you will not be vexed that I have be- 
scribbled your book." — S. T. C. 2d May, iSii. 

215 3 "Here lies a She-Sun": "An Epithalamion on Frederick 
Count Palatine of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth being married 
on St. Valentine's Day," stanza vii. 



NOTES 375 

215 8 "Lines to his Mistress": Donne's poem entitled "Refusal to 
allow his Young Wife to accompany him abroad as a Page." 

216 23 Temple-walk in which Chaucer : Chaucer as Clerk of King's 
Works at Westminster. See Skeat, " Works of Chaucer," I, xxxix. 

216 34 " lisped in numbers " : Pope, " Prologue to Satires," 1. 128. 

217 4 interview with Petrarch : an editorial footnote appears in the 
A^e-w Monthly Magazine: "Query, did they ever meet?" Even to-day 
no one is quite sure of the answer. If they did meet, it was on the 
occasion of Chaucer's visit to Italy in 1372-1373. For a discussion of 
this question, see Skeat, " Chaucer," I, xxv ; Lounsbury, " Studies in 
Chaucer," I, 67 ff. 

217 6 the author of the Decameron : Giovanni Boccaccio, Italian novelist 

(1313-1375)- 

217 8 Squire's Tale : the story of the falcon in " The Decameron," 
fifth day, ninth story ; the story of Friar Albert, ibid, fourth day, second 
story, etc. 

217 14 Cadmuses : a reference to the legend of the killing of the dragon 
by Cadmus and, on the advice of Athena, his sowing the teeth, out of 
which armed men grew up. Also Cadmus is said to have introduced 
into Greece from Phoenicia or Egypt an alphabet of sixteen letters. 

217 20 a fine portrait of Ariosto : See Works, XII, 424. Note by 
Waller and Glover : 

Hazlitt probably refers to the Portrait of a Poet in the National Gallery, now 
ascribed to Palma. Titian's portrait of Aretine is in the Pitti Galler)'. 

217 34 " creature of the element " : " Comus," II. 299-301. 

218 5 ^^ That was Arion crowned": "Faerie Queene," Book IV, 
canto xi, stanza 23. 

218 7 Captain C: Captain James Burney, son of Dr. Burney, brother 
of Fanny Burney, the writer, and a very intimate friend of the Lambs. 
M. C. was Martin Burney, son of Captain Burney, or, as he came to be. 
Rear Admiral Burney. He was a member of the party that visited the 
Hazlitts at Winterslow (see Introduction, p. xxiv). 

218 8 the Wandering Jew : the legend is that Christ, bearing his cross 
to Calvary, asked to rest at the stall of a shoemaker. The latter struck 
him and bade him go on. As a punishment he was never to die, but was 
to walk the earth till the Judgment Day. Eugene Sue has treated the 
story in his novel, " Le Juif errant." 

218 10 Pope talking with Patty Blount: Martha Blount (1690-1762) 
was a friend of Pope. To her Pope left most of his possessions when 
he died. 



3/6 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

218 10 Miss D : Mrs. Reynolds. See "Literary Remains," II, 

342. This was the lady who had been Lamb's schoolmistress. Her 
maiden name was Chambers, possibly "prim Betsy Chambers" of 
Lamb's " Gone or Going." See Lucas, " Life of Lamb," I, 38 ; also 380 ff. 

218 17 Scotland with the Pretender : the French victory at Fontenoy, 
May 31, 1745, encouraged Charles Edward Stuart and the Jacobites in 
Scotland to push forward. This movement resulted in the battle at 
Culloden Moor, January 23, 1746. See Boswell, "Johnson" (edited by 
Hill), I, 176 ff. 

219 y Lord Cornbury : Henry Hyde (1710-1753), friend of Bolingbroke 
and Lady Montagu. 

219 5 "Despise low joys " : " Imitations of Horace," Book I, epistle vi, 
11. 60-61. 

219 9 Lord Mansfield (1733-1821) : Lord Chief Justice of the Court 
of Common Pleas. 

219 12 '" Conspicuous scene " : ibid. 11. 50-53. 

219 18 "Why rail they then" : " Epilogue to Satires," Dialogue II, 
11. 138-139- 

219 22 " But why then publish " : " Prologue to Satires," 11. 135-146. 

220 14 Gay's verses to him : " Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece. 
A Copy of Verses written by Mr. Gay upon Mr. Pope's having finished 
his Translation of Homer's Iliad. " See Gay's Poems (edited by Under- 
bill), I, 207. 

220 21 E : Erasmus Phillips ; this name is given in " Literary 

Remains," II, 346. If this is correct, it was the Phillips who was a very 
intimate friend of the Burneys. This may be the one who with Martin 
Burney and the Lambs visited the Ilazlitts at Winterslow. 

2219 "nigh-sphered in Heaven": Collins, "Ode on the Poetical 
Character," 1. 66. 

221 13 J. F ■-: Barron Field (1 786-1846). See" Literary Remains," 

II, 347. He was a lawyer and miscellaneous writer. He was the friend 
with initials " B. F." who accompanied Charles and Mary Lamb to 
Hertfordshire. See " Essays of Elia." 

221 IG Wildair : " Sir Harry Wildair" (1701), by George Farquhar. 
221 1(3 Abel Drugger : in Ben Jonson's "Alchemist" (1610). 
221 21 Barry, and Quin : actors, rivals of Garrick. 
221 21 Shuter : comic actor of the same time. 

22121 Weston: Thomas Weston (1737-1776), one of the best 
comedians of his time. 

221 22 Mrs. Clive : called Kitty C^ive, in comedy. 
221 22 Mrs. Pritchard : famous as Lady' Macbeth. 



NOTES 377 

222 2 (Bstus : the genuine fire of the actor. 

222 8 suddenly missed Garrick : many such anecdotes are told of Gar- 
rick. See Percy Fitzgerald, " David Garrick" (edition of 1899), pp. 215 ff. 

222 15 Roscius : friend of Cicero and greatest comic actor of Rome. 

222 23 Mustapha and Alaham : both are tragedies by Fulke Greville 
(Lord Brooke). 

222 25 Kit Marlowe : the familiar name of Christopher Marlowe 
(1564-1593). 

222 25 the sexton of St. Ann's: Ilazlitt is buried in St. Anne's 
Church, Soho, London. 

223 4 G : William Godwin. See " Literary Remains," II, 350. 

223 5 his romantic visit to Drummond : between September, 1618, and 

January 19, 1619, Ben Jonson went to visit the poet Drummond of 
Hawthornden. The notes which Drummond made of their talk form the 
main source of the biography of Jonson. See " Conversations with 
Drummond of Hawthornden" (edited by Laing). 

223 8 Eugene Aram (1704-1759) : he was hanged for the murder of 
Daniel Clark. He was a great scholar and was the source of the highly 
idealized portrait in liulwer Lytton's novel of the same name (1S32). 

223 9 "Admirable Crichton": James Crichton(i 560-1 585 ?), surnamed 
The Admirable, or the Wonderful, by Sir Thomas Urquhart in 1652. 
He was a remarkable writer and scholar. Mr. J. M. Barrie has written 
a delightful play about him. 

223 15 H : Leigh Hunt. See " Literary Remains," II, 355. 

223 22 Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) : American theologian and 
philosopher, author of " Freedom of the Will" (1754). 

224 18 DugaldStewart(i753-i828): distinguishedScottishphilosopher. 
224 9 J : J has not been identified. 

224 11 Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus : both scholastic philosophers, 
the former of the thirteenth and the latter of the ninth century. 

224 21 Duchess of Bolton: Lavinia Fenton (1708-1760) played first 
the part of Polly in Gay's " Beggar's Opera " (1728). 

224 22 Steele and Addison : Captain Sentry in " Spectator," No. 2. 

224 25 Otway and Chatterton : Thomas Otway (1652-1685), poet and 
tragic dramatist. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), the boy poet, author 
of " The Rowley Poems." 

224 27 Thomson fell asleep: James Thomson (1700-174S), author of 
"The Seasons," was proverbially indolent. 

224 29 John Barleycorn : Barleycorn is personification of malt liquor 
as made from barley. See Burns's poem, " John Barleycorn : a Ballad," 
I, 33-35 (Aldine edition). 



3/8 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

225 9 Fornarina : she is said to have been a baker's daughter with 
the name Margherita, and is commonly called Raphael's mistress. The 
name was given to Raphael's famous picture about 1750. 

225 !) Lucretia Borgia (14S0-1519) : the daughter of Cardinal Borgia, 
who afterwards became Pope Alexander VL She played an important 
part in the history of her day. 

225 10 model of St. Peter's: Michelangelo (1475-1564) became archi- 
tect of St. Peter's, Rome, January i, 1547. 

225 24 Giotto Di Bondone (d. 1337), Giovanni Cimabue (1240-1302), 
Ghirlandaio (Domenico Bigarde) (1449-1494) : early Florentine painters 
whose work was the inspiration for the greater masters who succeeded 
them. 

225 27 " Whose names on earth " : Hazlitt liked to quote these lines, 
which he thought belonged to Dante. Waller and Glover print a few 
sentences from Lamb's letter to Bernard Barton (February 17, 1823), 
which seem to offer an explanation : " I once quoted two lines from a 
translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very greatly admired, and quoted in 
a book, as proof of the stupendous power of that poet ; but no such lines 
are to be found in the translation, which has been searched for the 
purpose. I must have dreamed them, for I am quite certain I did not 
forge them knowingly. What a misfortune to have a lying memory " 
(Hazlitt, Works, X, 405-406). 

226 2 "Legend of Good Women " : Chaucer's work, written about 1385. 
See Skeat, " Works of Chaucer," Vol. III. 

226 8 Duchess of Newcastle : Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of New- 
castle ( 1 624-1 674), writer of plays, poems, and letters. She was much 
admired in her day. 

226 8 Mrs. Hutchinson: Lucy Hutchinson (b. 1620), a most interest- 
ing and well-educated woman of the seventeenth century. She wrote 
the life of her husband, the Puritan colonel, in 1 664-1 671, but it was 
not published till 1806. 

226 11 one in the room : Mary Lamb. 

226 14 Ninon de L'Enclos (1615-1705), the typical Frenchwoman of 
the gay seventeenth-century society as well as the leader of fashion in 
Paris and the friend of wits and poets. Especially noteworthy is her 
long friendship with Saint-£vremond. 

226 28 Tamerlane : Timur Lang, the renowned oriental conqueror 
of the fourteenth century. The name has become vulgarized into 
Tamerlane or Tamberlane. He has been a popular subject for trag- 
edy. " Monk " Lewis's " Timour," Marlowe's " Tamburlaine," Rowe's 
" Tamerlane." 



NOTES 379 

226 28 Ghengis Khan : Jenghiz Khan (i 162-1227), ruler of the Mon- 
gols, one of the greatest conquerors that the world has ever seen. 

226 34 "Your most exquisite reason": "Twelfth Night," II, iii, 153. 

227 14 Leonardo : the famous picture of " The Last Supper " by Leo- 
nardo da Vinci (1452-1 519), painted on the refectory wall of the Convent 
of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Milan. 

227 17 Menenius : Menenius Agrippa in Shakspere's " Coriolanus," 
11, i. 

227 19 continued H : in " Literary Remains " and " Winterslow " 

this speech is given to Lamb. This has been done in almost every 
reprint of the essay, likewise in Lucas, " Life of Lamb," I, 388. It 
seems, however, that the following note by Waller and Glover, Works, 
XII, 476, is the better explanation : 

The Magazine clearly gives it to H , that is, Leigh Hunt. It is, of course, 

conceivable that the editor of " Literary Remains " silently corrected an error in 
the Magazine, but that does not seem likely, because, in the first place, the speech 
seems more characteristic of Hunt than of Lamb, and secondly, because the vol- 
ume of the Nczv Monthly (XVI) in which the essay appeared contains a list of 
errata in which two corrections (one of them relating to initials) are made in the 
essay and yet this " H " is left uncorrected. 

ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 

This essay appeared in the Monthly Magazine, March, 1827. It was 
first republished with many changes in Hazlitt's " Literary Remains " 
(1836), as Essay XV. 

228 1 "Life is a pure flame": Thomas Browne, " Ilydriotaphia," 
chap. V. 

228 3 my brother's : John Hazlitt (1767-1837), the painter. See Intro- 
duction, pp. xi and xv. 

228 10 " The vast " : cf. Addison, " Cato," V, i. 

228 17 " Bidding the lovely scenes " : Collins, " The Passions," 1. 32. 

229 17 "this sensible, warm motion " : "Measure for Measure," III, i, 
120. 

230 1 " wine of life " : " Macbeth," II, iii, 76. 

230 13 the foolish fat scullion : " Tristram Shandy, ' Book V, chap. vii. 

230 note Joseph Fawcett (1758 .^-1804) : dissenting minister and poet. 
He became a very popular preacher in London. Mrs. Siddons and the 
Kembles are said to have been frequent visitors to his church. His 
"Art of War" was published in 1795, ""'' '794' as Hazlitt says. 

231 13 "the feast of reason": Pope, "Imitations of Horace," Satire 
I, 128. 



38o SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

232 3 "The stockdove": Thomson, "The Castle of Indolence," 
Canto i, stanza 4. 

232 note Lady Wortley Montague (i 690-1 762): one of the most interest- 
ing women of the eighteenth century. Her letters have given her a high 
place among the letter writers of the world. For her comments on Field- 
ing and Richardson, see especially the letters dated December 14, 1750, 
December 8, 1751, October 20, 1752, June 23, 1754, September 22, 1755. 

232 note effendi: " a Turkish title of respect, chiefly applied to govern- 
ment officials and to members of the learned professions" (New Eng- 
lish Dictionary). See Lady Montagu's Letter, May 17, 17 17. 

232 note '" had it not been " : Works, II, 254. 

232 note she says of Richardson: II, 222 and 285. 

233 note monstrum ingens, biforme : M.ne.\A, III, 658. 

233 note Mr. Moore: Thomas Moore (1779-1852). See Hazlitt's 
essay in the " Spirit of the Age," IV, 353. 

233 note Lady Mary : Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. See above. 

234 30 Cathedral at Peterborough : Hazlitt's father and mother were 
married at Peterborough, January 19, 1766. See Introduction, p. ix. He 
came back to the place probably in the years when he lived at Wem, 
perhaps in 1796. See Introduction, p. xv. 

In the south aisle of the Peterborough Cathedral is a monument 
marking the former resting place of Mary Queen of Scots. By order 
of her son, James I, in 161 2, her remains were removed to the Chapel 
of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey. 

235 18 "the purple light of love": Gray, "The Progress of Poesy," 

1. 41 : 

The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love. 

235 31 " the Raphael grace " : Pope, " Mora! Essays," VIII, 36. 

236 2 " gain a new vigour " : Cowper, " Charity," 1. 104. 

237 33 " From the dungeon " : Coleridge, " Sonnet to Schiller." See 
" On Reading Old Books," p. 102. 

238 4 Don Carlos : see " On the Fear of Death," p. 120. 

238 13 my miniature-picture: one which was painted by his brother 
while the Hazlitts were in America. It is mentioned in " Liber Amoris," 
Letter VI. 

238 22 "That time is past " : Wordsworth, " Tintern Abbey," 11. 83-85. 

239 10 " Even from the tomb " : Gray, " Elegy," 11. 91-92. 

239 18 " all the life of life " : see Burns, " Lament for James." 

239 27 " From the last dregs " : Dryden, "Aurengzebe," Act IV, scene i. 

240 20 "treason domestic" : " Macbeth," III, ii, 24-25. 

240 32 " reverbs its own hollowness " : " King Lear," I, i, 145. 



NOTES 381 

ON READING NEW BOOKS 

This essay first appeared in the Monthly Magazine for July, 1827. 
It was published with some changes in " Sketches and Essays " (1839). 
This paper was written during the author's stay at Florence in May, 
1825. See " Memoirs," II, 154. The present text is a reprint from the 
magazine. 

242 7 Sir Walter writes no more : Scott died in 1832, seven years after 
the writing of this essay. " The Betrothed " and " The Talisman " 
appeared in 1825, "Woodstock," "Fair Maid of Perth," "Anne of 
Geierstein " were the important books of those seven years. 

242 8 Lord Byron : Byron had lived abroad seven or eight years and 
had died in Greece on the nineteenth of April, 1824. 

242 note The complete sentence was, " And give me leave to tell 
your lordships, by the way, that statutes are not like women, for they 
are not yet the worse for being old " (" Speech on the Dissolution of 
Parliament" (1676), included in Hazlitt's "Eloquence of the British 
Senate"). George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham (1627-1688), 
is famous for having written " The Rehearsal." 

244 1 "has just come" : " Richard III," I, i, 21. 

244 17 to give sentence of life or death : this phrase was none too 
strong for Hazlitt, who after many experiences had suffered from preju- 
diced criticism. 

244 31 circulating libraries : see the interesting account of the " Books 
of Lydia Languish's Circulating Library," in G. H. Nettleton's "The 
Major Dramas of Richard Brinsley Sheridan." See introduction, 
pp. Ixviii-lxxvii (Ginn and Company). 

245 1 the Waverley romances : published anonymously until 1827, 
when Scott publicly confessed at the dinner given for the benefit of 
the Edinburgh Theatrical Fund, February 23, 1827. 

246 12 Manuscript of Cicero's : Cardinal Angelo Maia (1782-1854), an 
Italian cardinal, noted as a philologist and antiquary, discovered various 
manuscripts and pamphlets and edited Cicero's " De RepubHca." 

246 15 A Noble Lord : the Marquis of Blandford bought Valdorfer's 
edition of Boccaccio for ;if 2260 at the Roxburghe Sale in 18 12. 

246 23 Mr. Thomas Taylor : Thomas Taylor (1758-1835), the Platonist. 
" The old Duke of Norfolk (Bernard Edward, twelfth Duke, 1765-1842) 
was his patron and locked up nearly the whole of Taylor's edition of 
Plato (5 vols., 1804) in his library." See Works, note xii, 484. 

246 note Critique of Pure Reason : the famous philosophical treatise 
by Kant in 1783 and second edition with modifications in 1787. 



382 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

247 2 Ireland's celebrated . . . forgery : the forgery, " Vortigern," by 
William Henry Ireland (1777-1835), was produced by the famous actor, 
Kemble, at Drury Lane Theater on April 2, 1796. After a visit to 
Stratford in 1794 Ireland had begun a series of forgeries of mortgage 
deeds, a transcript of " Lear," extract from " Hamlet," a new blank-verse 
play in Shakspere's handwriting, called " Vortigern " and " Rowena." 
The analysis of this play led to a complete exposure of the fraud. 
For a satisfactory account see J. A. Farrer, " Literary Forgeries," 
chap. xiv. 

247 note G. D. : Lamb's friend George Dyer (1755-1841). His " His- 
tory of the University and Colleges of Cambridge " was published in 
two volumes in 1814. See a most interesting chapter on Dyer in Lucas, 
" Life of Lamb," I, 144-167. Lamb conferred immortality upon him in 
his essays, " Oxford in the Vacation" and "Amicus Redivivus." 

In reference to the number of corrections in the " History," Lamb 
called Dyer '" Gancellarius Major." Hazlitt's essay, " On the Look of a 
Gentleman" (1821), speaks of Dyer as one of " God Almighty's Gentle- 
men." See Works, VII, 219-220. 

247 note Another friend : Leigh Hunt. See his essay, "Jack Abbot's 
Breakfast." 

247 note Peel's coffee-house : this was one of the coffeehouses of the 
Johnsonian period at Nos. 177-178 Fleet Street, east corner of Fetter 
Lane. Here was long preserved a portrait of Dr. Johnson, on the key- 
stone of a chimney piece, said to have been painted by Sir Joshua 
Reynolds. See Timbs, "Club Life in London," p. 361. 

248 3 Buonaparte . . . was fond of it : Hazlitt said that this was one 
reason why he liked Napoleon. 

248 16 We may observe of late a strong craving after Memoirs: per- 
haps a reference to Walter Savage Landor's " Imaginary Conversations," 
the first series of which appeared in 1824. Landor began these at 
Florence, where Hazlitt in May, 1825, wrote this essay. 

248 22 Petrarch and Laura: Petrarch (1304-1374), the celebrated 
Italian poet and humanist and friend of Dante. It was not uncommon 
for poets in the Middle Ages to choose some lady to whom homage 
might be paid in sonnet or other lyric poems ; for example, Petrarch and 
Laura, Dante and Beatrice, &c. 

248 23 Abelard and Eloise : Abelard was a distinguished French 
scholar and preceptor of the twelfth century. Of his love for Heloise, 
the abbess, many poems have been written. Especially well known is 
Pope's poem. The letters of the two lovers have been frequently 
printed. 



NOTES 383 

248 30 Lucan (39-65 a.d.) : a Latin poet and prose writer, author of 
" Pharsalia," an epic poem in ten books dealing with the civil war 
between Caesar and Pompey. 

The passage in Rowe's translation is as follows : 

Ah ! my once greatest lord ! ah, cruel hour ! 
Is thy victorious head in fortune's power? 
Since miseries my baneful love pursue. 
Why did I wed thee, only to undo ? 
But see, to death, my willing neck I bow ; 
Atone the angry gods by one kind blow. 

249 8 " proud as when blue Iris bends " : "Troilus and Cressida," I, iii, 
380. 

251 24 Sadler's Wells or the Adelphi : two theaters of the time. The 
former was first built in 1753 on the site of a medicinal well discovered 
in 1683 by a Mr. Sadler. The Adelphi was built on the Strand, London, 
in 1806, and was the "home of melodrama and screaming farce." In 
Walter Scott's "Diary" this is spoken of as Dan Ferry's Theater, called 
the Adelphi: "supping on oysters and porter in honest Dan Ferry's 
house, like a squirrel's cage, above the Adelphi Theater" (Lockhart, 

IV, 75)- 

251 26 "full of wise saws " : " As You Like It," II, vii, 156. 

252 3 euphuism : a common noun from John Lyly's celebrated romance 
" Euphues " ( 1 578-1 579). The book portrayed the exaggerated style of 
language of the day and had a strong, though brief, influence upon lit- 
erary fashions. For satiric treatment of euphuism, see Shakspere's 
" Love's Labour 's Lost." Sir Walter Scott showed a mistaken concep- 
tion of euphuism in "The Monastery." The best study of the book and 
the fashion it presented is by Friedrich Landmann in "Der Euphuis- 
mus, sein Wesen, seine Quelle, seine Geschichte." Giessen, 1881. 

252 14 Rossini (i 792-1868) : celebrated Italian composer, well known 
in London about 1823. 

252 18 "an insolent piece of paper": Massinger's "A New Way to 
Pay Old Debts," Act IV, scene iii, where the line reads " a piece of ar- 
rogant paper." Mr. J. Rogers Rees has called my attention to a copy of 
this play (in his possession) which Hazlitt edited, with an introduction, 
in 1817. 

252 26 Longinus (210-273) : Greek critic and philosopher who is sup- 
posed to have written the essay " On the Sublime." For the reference 
see section ix. 

252 31 Irving's Orations: see above, p. 343. See also Hazlitt's essay on 
Irving in his " Spirit of the Age," IV, 222. 



384 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

252 33 Voltaire's jests and the Jew's Letters: Voltaire maintained 
that the Jews were the enemies of the human race. See "CEuvres" 
(edited by Baudoin, 1826), XX, 396, 455. Dr. Philip le Fanu pubhshed 
in 1777 a translation of the Abbe Guenee's " Lettres de certaines juives 
a M. Voltaire." 

253 2 Rent and the Poor-Laws : that was a seething time for the Eng- 
lish government, and these were great questions. It was not until 1832 
that the New Reform Bill became a law. The New Poor Law was 
enacted in 1834. 

253 5 Pascal's Provincial Letters: Pascal (1623-1662), the French 
geometrician and philosopher, wrote eighteen letters over the nom de 
plume, Louis de Montalte, professedly to a friend in the provinces. 
Hence the epistles are known as "' Les Provinciales." They defended 
the doctrine of the Port-Royal monastery against the Jesuits. 

253 7 Princess of Cleves: " La Princesse de Cleves," a novel (1677) 
by Madame de La Fayette, deals with the court of Henry II and Mary 
Stuart. 

253 32 flocci-nauci: see Shenstone's Letter XXI (1741) : 

For whatever the world might esteem in poor Somerville, I really find that I 
loved him for nothing so much as his fJocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money. 

Shenstone's Works (edition of 1777). 

253 34 " flames in the forehead " : " Lycidas," 1. 171. 

254 29 Condorcet (1743- 1794) : French mathematician, interested in 
political economy and theology. See Dowden, " French Literature," 
P-255: 

Condorcet . . . bringing together the ideas of economists and historians, traced 
human progress through the past and uttered ardent prophecies of human per- 
fectibility in the future. 

254 note This note was omitted from the reprint in " Sketches and 
Essays" (1S39). 

255 7 The Enquiry concerning Political Justice : published in 1793. 

255 21 "By Heavens I'd rather be": Wordsworth's sonnet, "The 
world is too much with us." 

256 2 "trampled under the hoofs" : see Burke, "Reflections on the 
Revolution in France " (edited by Payne), II, 93. 

257 note sent to Coventry : see New English Dictionary: 

To send (a person) to Coventry ; to exclude him from the society of which 
he is a member on account of objectionable conduct ; to refuse to associate with 
him. 

See also Azotes and Queries, ninth series, IV, 264, 335. 



NOTES 385 

257 note Parthian retreat : see Smith's " Classical Dictionary" : 

The Parthians were a very warlike people, and were especially celebrated as 
horse-archers. Their tactics became so celebrated as to pass into a proverb. 
Their mail-clad horsemen spread hke a cloud round the hostile army, and poured 
in a shower of darts, and then evaded any closer conflict by a rapid flight, during 
which they still shot their arrows back upon the enemy. 

257 note Queen's Matrimonial Ladder: one of William Hone's (1780- 
1842) squibs published in 1820 and illustrated with cuts by Cruikshank. 
The complete title was " The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder, a National 
Toy, with Fourteen Step Scenes and Illustrations in Verse." This refers 
to Queen Caroline. See " Dictionary of National Biography " for an 
interesting account of the stormy life of Hone. 



ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 

This paper first appeared in the N'ew Monthly Magazine for August, 
1827. It was republished in " Sketches and Essays." 

260 25 " discourse of reason " : see " Hamlet," I, ii, 150. 

261 33 Thomson's Castle of Indolence : canto i, stanza 64. 

264 15 sent to Coventry: Hazlitt likes to use this phrase. See p. 257 
and note. 

264 22 " into our heart of hearts " : " Hamlet," III, ii, 78. 

264 27 " that enrich the shops " : Roscommon's translation of Horace's 
" Art of Poetry." 

264 30 "That bring their authors": the source of this quotation is 
unknown. 

265 11 Walton's Angler: "The Compleat Angler" first appeared in 
1653 ; it was greatly altered in the second edition in 1655. Editions and 
reprints innumerable have been published since that time. 

265 12 " That dallies " : " Twelfth Night," II, iv, 49 : 

And dallies with the innocence of love 
Like the old age. 

267 5 " Wit at the helm " : Gray, " The Bard," 1. 74 : 
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm. 

267 12 a butt, according to the Spectator: see "Spectator," No. 47, 
April 24, 171 1, a paper on laughter: 

I mean those honest gentlemen that are always exposed to the wit and raillery 
of their well-wishers and companions ; that are pelted by men, women and chil- 
dren, friends and foes, and in a word, stand as '' butts " in conversation, for every- 
one to shoot at that pleases. 



386 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

268 1 dedicated his Cain : " Cain, A Mystery " was begun on July i6, 
1821, and finished September 9, and was published in December. The 
publication of the poem brought forth hostile reviews and attacks. Scott 
cordially accepted the dedication. 

270 4 " hew you as a carcase " : " Julius Caesar," II, i, 174. 

270 U tempora molliafandi: /I^neid, IV, 293-294: 

The favorable times or occasions for speaking. 

270 32 "Not to admire " : Pope, " Imitations of Horace," Sixth Epistle 
of the First Book, 11. 1-2. 

271 4 Westminster School of Reform : the Westminster- Review was 
estabHshed in 1S23 by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and others. This 
paper gave a great impetus to Radicalism through the contribution of 
Bowring, the first editor, James and John Stuart Mill, and others. 

271 8 the Scotch, as a nation : see a very uncomplimentary essay on 
"The Scotch Character" by Hazlitt, published in the Libet-al (1822) 
and republished for the first time in Works, XII, 253-259. Lamb had 
something of the same aversion as expressed in his Elia essay, " Im- 
perfect Sympathies " : "I have been trying all my life to like Scotch- 
men." 

271 21 " milk of human kindness " : " Macbeth," I, v, 15. 



ON A SUN-DIAL 

This paper was first published in the A^eia A!ofit/i/y Magazine, Octo- 
ber, 1827, and was republished in " Sketches and Essays" (1839). It is 
said to have been written in 1825. 

274 1 " To carve out dials " : "3 Henry VI," II, v, 24. 

274 14 along the Brenta : on his trip to the Continent (August, 1824, 
to October, 1825) Hazlitt went through France and Italy. The reference 
here is to his trip from Padua to Venice, Works, IX, 266. 

275 11 "' morals on the time " : " As You Like It," II, vii, 29. 

277 6 L' Amour fait passer : "love makes the time pass," which the 
wits travestied into " Time makes love pass (away)." 

277 18 "How sweet the moonlight " : " Merchant of Venice," V, i, 54. 

278 22 the account given by Rousseau : probably the story told in 
" Les Confessions," Partie II, Liv. XI. 

278 30 " Allans, monfils" : See " Les Confessions," Partie I, Livre I : 

Come, my son, I am more a child than you. 

279 9 " lend it both an understanding " : '" Hamlet," I, ii, 250. 



NOTES 387 

279 28 " with its brazen throat " : " King John," III, iii, 37-39 : 

if the midnight bell, 
Did with his iron tongue and brazen mouth 
Sound on into the drowsy ear of night. 

279 30 " swinging slow " : " II Penseroso," 1. 76. 

280 (J I confess, nothing . . . interests me : see Hazlitt's essays, " On 
the Feeling of Immortality in Youth," pp. 2 28ff., and "On the Past 
and Future," pp. 142 ff. 

280 15 Even George IV. : this sentence is omitted from the reprint in 
" Sketches and Essays." 

281 15 " the poor man's only music " : Coleridge, " Frost at Midnight," 
1. 29. 

282 4 " goes to church in a coranto " : " Twelfth Night," I, iii, 137. 
282 K) " Sing those witty rhymes " : Wordsworth, " The Fountain," 

11.13-15. 

282 22 Macheath's execution : " The Beggar's Opera." 

283 8 " as in a map the voyager " : Cowper, " The Task," VI, 17. 
283 22 Robinson Crusoe lost his reckoning : "' Robinson Crusoe " (edited 

by Aitken), p. 69 : 

After I had been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my thoughts 
that I should lose my reckoning of time for want of books and pen and ink, and 
should even forget the Sabbath days from the working days ; but to prevent this, 
I cut it with my knife upon a large post, in capital letters. 

283 34 " with light-winged toys " : " Othello," I, iii, 269. 

284 20 I have done something of the kind : Mr. Waller thinks that Haz- 
litt here probably refers to the description of his father in " My First 
Acquaintance with Poets," pp. 175 ff- 

ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 

This essay consists of two parts published in the London Weekly 
Review, December 6 and 13, 1828. It was afterwards published with 
some changes in " Sketches and Essays " (1839). 

285 1 "If to do" : " Merchant of Venice," I, ii, 11 ff. 

285 3 Curl: Edmund Curll (167 5-1747), prominent as a bookseller 
and editor. He quarreled with Pope, and at one time, for some of his 
publications, had to stand in the pillory at Charing Cross. 

285 9 the young Earl of Warwick : the story is told that just before his 
death Addison called to him his stepson, Warwick, and said, " See in 
what peace a Christian can die." See Young, " Conjectures on Original 
Composition," Works, p. 136. 



388 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

285 18 "The spirit was willing" : Matthew xxvi, 41. 

286 30 Video meliora proboque : Ovid, "Metamorphoses," VII, 20. See 
Azotes attd Queries, ninth series, V, 40. 

287 29 The scene between the Abbot : the Abbot Paul and the Porter, 
in Sheridan's "Duenna" (1775). 

288 3 olla podrida : a Spanish phrase meaning hterally "a rotten pot." 
A favorite Spanish dish consisting of various kinds of meat and vege- 
tables ; hence a hodgepodge. It is often mentioned in " Don Quixote." 

288 10 Fornarina : see above, p. 378. 

288 18 "Who shone all": Thomson, "Castle of Indolence," canto i, 
stanza 69. 

289 31 remarks ... of Lord Shaftesbury : see his " Characteristics," 
Part I, section 2. 

290 10 " upon this bank " : " Macbeth," I, vii, 6. 

291 2 Vallombrosa : " Paradise Lost," I, 302-303 : 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 
In Vallombrosa. 

It is now the site of an ancient monastery founded in the eleventh 
century. 

291 3 Grand Chartreux : La Grand Chartreuse, the mother house of 
the order of Carthusian monks, in southern France near Grenoble. 

291 19 At the feast of Ramadan: the feast of el-Eed-es-Sagheer ("the 
minor festival ") is a Mohammedan celebration lasting for three days 
and following the month of Ramadan. 

292 15 " mighty coil and pudder " : " King Lear," III, ii, 50. 

293 8 Men err : with this sentence the first part of the essay concludes. 

294 14 French blacklegs : " Blacklegs " is originally the word for turf- 
swindler ; hence gambler. 

295 9 Manichean : at the close of the third century the three chief 
religious systems were Christian, JVeo-Platonism, and Manickeism, the 
last-named for Mani (Movixaros). It was a dualistic and universal 
religion. 

295 10 Gnostic : the gnostics were sects which arose in the Christian 
church in the first century. They held that knowledge rather than faith 
was important for salvation, and they rejected the literal interpretation 
of the Scriptures. 

295 19 Eremites and friars : " Paradise Lost," III, 474-475. 

297 1 the very origin of the term, cant : See New English Dictionary : 

Presumably represents cant-its^ " singing,'' " song," " chant," but the details of 
the derivations and development are unknown. 



NOTES 389 

297 19 Mr. Liberal Snake : in " Vivian Grey," the first novel by Ben- 
jamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881). The novel had 
appeared in 1827, only about a year before this essay was written. 
This was one of the novels by a writer of the so-called datidy school, 
which included Disraeli, Bulwer Lytton, Lister, and Theodore Hook. 

297 20 Mr. Theodore Hook (1788-1841) : dramatist and novelist. He 
was famous as a conversationalist and iviprovisatore and edited the 
New Mo7ithly Magazine. 

A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 

This paper was written at Winterslow, February 20, 1828, and was 
published in the London Weekly Review for the 29th of March, 1828. It 
was printed in the Winterslow volume, 1850. 

298 1 "This life is best " : " Cymbeline," III, iii, 29. 

298 2 Food, warmth, sleep, and a book : in Stevenson's " Celestial Sur- 
geon " we find : 

If morning skies, 

Books and my food and summer rain, 
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain. 

298 .3 ultima thule : Thule was the name given by the ancients to the 
most northern country with which they were acquainted. Hence the 
Romans called it tiltima Thule, " the farthest Thule." 

298 5 " A friend in your retreat " : Cowper, " Retirement," 11. 741-742. 

298 13 " done its spiriting gently " : " Tempest," I, ii, 299. 

298 26 "the spring comes slowly " : Coleridge, " Christabel," Part I. 

298 27 "' fields are dank " : Milton, " Sonnet to Lawrence," 1. 2. 

299 15 " left its little life in air " : Pope," Windsor Forest," 11. 133- 

134 : 

Oft as the mounting larks their notes prepare 

They fall and leave their little lives in air. 

299 25 " peep through the blanket " : " Macbeth," I, v, 51 : 

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark. 

300 10 " open all the cells " : Cowper, " The Task," VI, 11-12. 

300 18 Theodore and Honoria: a story which Dryden paraphrased from 
Boccaccio. 

300 22 "Of all the cities " : " Theodore and Honoria," 11. 1-2. 

300 32 " Which when Honoria " : ibid. 11. 342-343. 

301 1 " And made th' insult": Dryden, " Sigismonda and Guiscardo," 
11. 668-669. Dryden's lines are : 

And made th' insult, which in his gift appears. 



390 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

301 12 I am much pleased : this sentence was omitted from the Winter- 
slow edition and several other reprints. 

301 29 " Fall'n was Glenartny's stately tree" : from the last stanza 
of Scott's " Glenfinlas, or Lord Ronald's Coronach." 

302 12 Mr. Gifford : see the controversy between Gifford and Hazlitt. 
The sentence is quoted in full by Hazlitt in his article on Gifford in 
the " Spirit of the Age " : 

It was amusing to see this person, sitting like one of Brewer's Dutch boors 
over his gin and tobacco-pipes, and fancying himself a Leibnitz. 

302 17 I am rather disappointed : this sentence was omitted from the 
Winterslow reprint. 

303 i "the admired of all observers " : " Hamlet," IIL i, 162. 

303 14 What I have here stated : the passage beginning with this para- 
graph and reaching to " concerning certain prejudices," p. 304, has 
been left out of the Winterslow edition. 

304 12 pleasant "Companion" : Leigh Hunt. 

304 17 Aut CcEsar aut nullus : old Latin proverb, "Either Caesar or 
no one." In Hazlitt's essay, " Should Actors sit in Boxes," he writes, 
" The motto of a great actor should be, Aid Ccesar atit tiihil." See 
Suetonius, I, 79. 

304 30 L : probably Lamb. 

305 (j Mr. Godwin writing to Mr. Wordsworth : Lamb has told the story 
of the production and failure of this play written by Godwin. Every one 
interested in the people of that time should read his account in his 
essay in the London Magazine on " The Old Actors." " The Antonio " 
was performed at Drury Lane, December 13, 1800. 

305 15 Aristotles sitting in judgment : there was much disapproval of 
the dramatic innovations of Euripides. See Aristotle's, " Poetics." 
305 21 "Nor can I think": Dryden, "The Hind and the Panther," 

1.315- 

305 2Ci At the time I lived here formerly : see Introduction, p. xxiii. 
Hazlitt had gone from London to Winterslow immediately after his 
marriage in 1808 and lived there till 18 12, when he returned to London. 

305 32 Chaucer's Flower and Leaf : this poem is no longer attributed 
to Chaucer. In his lecture on Chaucer and Spenser, Hazlitt showed a 
special liking for this poem and quoted from it at length. See Works, V, 
27 seq. With little success Dryden made this poem over into heroic 
couplets. 

306 9 I used to walk out at this time : this refers to one of the visits 
of the Lambs to Winterslow, perhaps to that one made in 1S09 of which 
Lamb writes in his letter to Coleridge, October 30, 1809: 



NOTES 



391 



I have but this moment received your letter dated the 9th instant, having just 
conrte off a journey from Wiltshire, where I have been with Mary on a visit to 
Hazlitt. The journey has been of infinite service to her. We have had nothing 
but sunshiny days and daily walks from eight to twenty miles a day, have seen 
Wilton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, &c. Her illness lasted but six weeks ; it left her 
weak, but the country has made us whole. 

For an account of this visit see p. xxiv. See also Mary Lamb's letter to 
Mrs. Hazlitt, for November ,7. 

306 19 People then told me : Lamb had evidently been of Hazlitt's 
opinion regarding Claude, for he had written to Hazlitt on March i 5, 
1806, after a visit with Manning to some of the galleries : " Mon Dieii ! 
Such Claudes! Four Claudes bought for more than _;^ 10,000 (those 
who talk of Wilson being equal to Claude are either mainly ignorant 
or stupid) ; one of these was perfectly miraculous." 

306 23 hashed mutton with Amelia's : reference to the famous scene 
in Fielding's " Amelia " (Book X, chap, v) in which Amelia, sitting down 
in her husband's absence to the hashed mutton she had carefully pre- 
pared for him, denied herself half a pint of wine to save "the little sum 
of sixpence . . . while her husband was paying a debt of several guineas 
incurred by the ace of trumps being in the hands of his adversary." 

307 11 "And curtainclose such scene " : Collins, "Ode on the Poetical 
Character," 1. 76. 

THE SICK CHAMBER 

This paper was printed in the Monthly Magazine-, August, 1830, a few 
weeks before Hazlitt's death in September. " A Free Admission " had 
appeared in a previous issue of the same year. Alexander Ireland was 
the first to reprint this essay in his volume of Selections (1889). He 
states that this is the last essay which HazHtt wrote. The spirit of the 
paper reminds us of that later enthusiast and Hazlitt admirer, Stevenson. 
See above, p. 359. 

308 24 "the body of this death " : Romans vii, 24. 

308 25 " cooped and cabined in " : " Macbeth," III, iv, 24. 

308 28 " peep through the blanket " : ibid. I, v, 51. 

309 8 " a consummation devoutly " : " Hamlet," III, i, 9. 

309 12 Hoc erat in votis: Horace, " Satires," II, vi, i. 

310 3 " In pensive place obscure " : this passage is quoted from Lamb, 
"John Woodvil," Act V, scene i. 

310 6 "vows made in pain " : " Paradise Lost," IV, 97. 

310 13 " The Devil was sick " : Rabelais, Book IV, chap. xxiv. 

310 29 " like life and death " : Lamb, "John Woodvil," Act II, scene ii. 



392 SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 

311 2 "trouble deaf Heaven" : Shakspere, Sonnet XXIX. 
311 6 "moralise our complaints" : "As You Like It," II, i, 44. 
311 2!i " they have drugged my posset with " : " Macbeth," II, ii, 6. 

311 31 " puzzling o'er the doubt " : Cowper, " The Needless Alarm," 

11. 77-78 : 

'1 hat sage they seem'd, as lawyers o'er a doubt, 
Which, puzzling long, at last they puzzle out. 

312 26 "Like Siunson his green wythes " : Cowper, "The Task," V, 

737: 

With as much ease as Samson his green withes. 

313 7 Metastasio : Pietro Trepassi (assumed name, Metastasio) (1698- 
1782), Italian poet and dramatist, remarkable for the purity of his diction. 
For the lines see his " Temistocle," III, 2. 

313 27 "a world, both pure and good": Wordsworth, "Personal 
■Talk," 1. 34. 

314 7 History of a Foundling: " The History of Tom Jones, a Found- 
ling" (1749), by Henry Fielding. 

314 25 " We see the children " : Wordsworth, " Intimations of Immor- 
tality," 11. 170-17 1. 

315 2 Journey to Lisbon : " Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon " (1755), by 
Henry Fielding. 

315 3 Paul Cliff ord : a novel by Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), published 
in 1830, intended to promote a reform in criminal law. The novel was 
widely criticized. 

315 23 " The true pathos " : Burns, " Epistle to Dr. Blacklock." 



INDEX 



Abdication, 32, 326 

Abington, Mrs., 209, 373 

Academy of Compliments, 5, 318 

Achilles, 327 

Acquaintance with Poets, My First, 

175' 363 
Addison, Joseph, 17, 18, 19, 22, 27, 

51, 224, 255, 285, 330, 377, 387 
Adelphi Theatre, 251, 383 
Adventu7-e); The, 26, 102, 325 
/Eschylus, 251 
Aisop^s Fables, 18 
Anastasius, 94, 341 
Angelo, Michael, 57, 89, 225, 378 
Angerstein, John Julius, 114, 349 
Aram, Eugene, 223, 377 
Aretine, 73, 217, 333 
Ariosto, 31, 72, 217, 327, 333, 375 
Aristotle, 11, 246 
Austerlitz, 92, 340 
Ayrton, William, 212, 374 

Bacon, Francis, 21, 38, 58, 63, 223, 

328 
Ballantyne press, 97, 342 
Bannister, John, 208, 372 
Barry, Spranger, 221, 376 
Bartholomew-Fair, 203, 37 1 
Beau, Tibbs, 27, 325 
Beauclerc, Topham, 25, 324 
Beaumont, 58, 59, 106, 222, 332 
Bedford, Duke of, 105 
Begum affairs, 32, 327 
Berkeley, xvi, 99, 184, 223, 343, 366 
Betterton, Thomas, 16, 322 
Bible, the, 53, 67, 68 
Bickerstaff, Isaac, 14, 115, 321, 349 
Blacklegs, 294, 388 
Blackwood, William, 192, 368 
Blenheim, 1 14, 349 
Boccaccio, xvi, 12, 51, 73, 76, 217, 

300, 31 5' 335.345. 375 



Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 140, 

219.356, 376 
Bondone, Giotto di, 225, 378 
Borgia, Lucretia, 225, 378 
Boswell, James, 24, 25, 214, 218 
Brook, Lord, 222, 377 
Browne, Thomas, 159, 213, 228, 

379 
Bruscambille, 96, 341 
Buffamalco, 194, 368 
Bunyan, John, 51, 221 
Burke, Character of Mr., 29, 30, 31, 

326 
Burke, Edmund, xv, xvi, 21, 25, 33, 

42, 53. 103, 105, 108, 115, 181, 

194, 221, 326, 328, 345 
Burney, Captain James, xvi, 218, 

375 
Burns, Robert, 68, 140, 224, 377 
Burton, Robert, 149, 358 
Butler, Joseph, 184, 223, 366 
Butt, a, 267, 385 
Byron, Lord, 206, 207, 242, 253, 

254, 267, 296, 303, 366, 371, 381 

Camilla, 169, 361 
Canaletti, Antonio, 133, 354 
Cant and Hypocrisy, On, 285, 387 
Caracci, the, 113, 349 
Castiglione, Giovanni, 73, 333 
Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of 

Newcastle, 378 
Chalmers, Dr., 46, 329 
Chantry, Francis, 121, 190, 351, 

367 
Chapman, George, 59, 66, 72, 332, 

333 
Chatterton, Thomas, 224, 377 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 50, 51, 183, 

216, 217, 305, 330, 375, 378, 390 
Chester, John, 192, 195 
Chubb's Tracts, 98, 342 



393 



394 



SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 



Cimabue, Giovanni, 225, 227, 378 
Clarendon (Edward Hyde), 106, 

346 
Claude Lorrain, 47, 62, 86, 113, 
130, 146, 194, 225, 233, 294, 306 
Clive, Mrs., 221, 376 
Cobbett, William, 158, 164 
Cockney, 138, 202, 355, 371 
Coke, Edward, 58, 332 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ix, xvi, 
^;^, 102, 105, 170, 175, 176, 177, 
179, 181, 182, 183, 187, 188, 189, 
190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 
281, 344, 360, 363, 366 
Collins, William, 43, 391 
Colman, George, 354 
Condorcet, 254, 384 
Congreve, William, xvi, 206 
Comoissettr, the, 26, 102, 325 
Cooke's pocket-edition, 97, 342 
Cornbury, Lord, 219,376 
Correggio, Antonio, 90, 92, 225, 

339. 340 
Coryate, Thomas, 159 
Cotton, Charles, 13 
Court of Honor, 323 
Covent Garden, 199, 370 
Coventry, sent to, 257, 264, 384, 

385 
Cowley, Abraham, 13, 222, 320 
Cowper, William, 162, 194, 357, 

359. 368, 392 
Crichton, Admirable, 223, 377 
Crown, The Iron, 114, 349 
Curl (Edmund Curll), 285, 387 

Dante, 53, 55, 56, 73, 378 
D'Arblay, 169, 362 
Davy, Sir Humphry, 344 
Death, On the Fear of, 1 1 5, 349 
Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 51, 52, 

283, 387 
Dekker, Thomas, 59, 66, 71, 79, 

222, 332, 336 
Delphine, 94, 341 
De Quincey, Thomas, xxi 
Disagreeable People, On, 259, 385 
Disraeli, 389 
Dodd, William, 208, 372 
Doddington, George Bubb, 139, 

356 



Domenichino, 192, 368 

Don Quixote, xvi, 106, 136, 354, 361 

Donne, Dr., 214, 374 

Dow, Gerard, 88, 339 

Drake, Francis, 58, 332 

Drummond, W^illiam, 223, 377 

Drury Lane, 196, 199, 252, 370 

Dryden, 51, 300, 301, 306, 389 

Du Bartas, 73, 334 

Durfey, Tom, 16, 322 

Dyer, George, 247, 382 

Ebro's temper, the, 24, 324 
Edinbicrgh Revieio, 138, 244, 253, 

355 
Edwards, Jonathan, 223, 377 
Effendi, 232, 380 

Elizabethan Literature, On, 58,331 
Elliston, Robert William, 196,368 
Emery, John, 208, 372 
Erasmus, 159, 359 
Estcourt, Will, 16, 332 
Euphuism, 252, 383 

Familiar Style, On, 155, 358 
Faj-etvell to Fissay-Writing, A, 298, 

389 
Farquhar, George, xvi, 103, 345, 

376 
Farren, Elizabeth, 208, 372 
Faux, Guy, 212, 374 
Fawcett, Joseph, 230, 379 
Fear of Death, On the, 115, 349 
Feeling, Alan of,2% 
Feeling of Immo?iality in Youth, 

On the, 228, 379 
Fenton, Lavinia, 224, 377 
Field, Barron, 221, 376 
Fielding, Henry, xvi, 194, 205, 220, 

233 ; Amelia, 306, 391 ; Tom 

Jones, 341, 366, 392 
Fletcher, John, 58, 59, 66, 76, 77, 

106, 166, 222, 332, 335 
Fornarina, 225, 288, 378, 388 
Fortunatus's Wishing-Cap, 96, 341 
Froissart, Jean, 106, 198, 346, 369 
Fuller, Thomas, 106, 159, 347 
Fuseli, 19, 89, 252, 323, 339 

Garrick, David, 25, 115, 221, 222, 
3-5. 376, 377 



INDEX 



395 



Gay, John, 155, 220, 224, 253, 329, 
376 ; The Be^ga7-''s Opera, 33, 46, 
282,315 

Gessner, Solomon, 193, 308 

Ghirlandaio, 225, 227, 378 

Gifford, William, xxxi, 302, 390 

Gilray, James, 204, 371 

Giorgione, 90, 340 

Giotto, 225, 227, 378 

Globe, the, 115, 349 

Gnostic, 295, 388 

Godwin, William, xvi, 1S2, 194, 
196, 254, 305, 368, 369, 377, 384, 

390 
Goethe, 83, loi, 337 
Going a Journey, On, 163, 359 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 23, 25, 26, 27, 

102, 115, 131,218, 221, 248,325, 

353 
Grand Chartreux, 291, 388 
Gray, Thomas, 136, 194, 224, 354 
Grecian coffee-house, the, 15, 321 
Green Park, 15, 321 
Greville, Fulke, 213, 214, 374 
Gribelin, 91, 169, 340, 361 
Grosvenor, Lord, 114 
Guardian, the, 20, 324 
Guicciardini, Francesco, 106, 347 
Guido, 113, 225, 235, 251, 269 
Guy of Warwick, 18, 323 

Halifax, Lord, 13, 320 

Hamlet, I, 317 

Handel, 288 

Hartley, David, xvi, 99, 223, 343 

Hawkesworth, John, 26, 325 

Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 190, 

367 
Hazlitt, William, birth, ix ; father 
of, ix, 340, 351, 364, 380; moves 
to America, x; his sister Peggy, 
X, xi; life in America, xi; moves 
to Wem, xii ; visits Liverpool, 
xiii; at Hackney, xiv ; walks 
about country, xv ; his brother 
John, xv, xvi, 379, 380 ; visits 
Paris, xviii ; as itinerant painter, 
xix ; with Lamb at the farce, 
XX ; becomes acquainted with 
Sarah Stoddart, xxi ; marriage, 
xxii ; first literary work, xxiii ; 



at Winterslow, xxiii ; birth of 
son, XXV, 350 ; visits London, 
XXV ; lectures, xxvii; life in Lon- 
don, xxvii ; as portrait painter, 
xxviii ; as reporter, xxviii ; lec- 
tures on English Poets, xxx ; 
employed on journals, xxx ; 
Liber Amoris, xxxiii; the divorce, 
xxxiii ; second marriage, xxxvi ; 
his relation to the John Scott 
duel, xxxvi ; at work on life of 
Napoleon, xxxvii ; trip abroad, 
xxxviii ; alone at W' interslow, 
xxxix ; last days in London, 
xxxix, 377; Lamb's letter, xxxix; 
Talfourd's description, xl ; as 
critic of drama, xli ; as critic of 
painting, xlvii ; as critic of books 
and men, xlix ; as personal es- 
sayist, liv ; his style, Ivii ; the 
man Hazlitt, Ix; his temper, Ixi ; 
his reading, Ixiii ; his relation to 
friends, Ixiii ; his painting, 378 

Herald's College, 20, 324 

Hesiod, 72, 333 

Hessey, James A., 138, 355 

Heywood, Thomas, 59, 66, 222, 332 

Hobbes, Thomas, 99, 198, 223, 
265, 343 

Hogarth, William, 134, 205, 209, 
221, 354^72 

Holbein, Hans, 251 

Holcroft, Thomas, xvi, 182, 196, 

369 
Hollinshed, Raphael, 106, 346 
Homer, 37, 53, 54, 55, 57, 72, 107, 

183, 220, 333 
Hook, Theodore, 297, 389 
Hooker, Richard, 58 
Hot-cockles, 199, 369 
Hume, xvi, 99, 183, 184, 223, 365 
Hunt, Leigh, xi, 301, 302, 303, 304, 

377' 382, 390 
Hutchinson, Lucy, 226, 378 

Impasting, 90, 340 

Ireland, William Henry, 247, 382 

Irving, Edward, loi, 252, 343, 383 

Jacob's Dream, 45, 329 
Jeffrey, Francis, ix 



396 



SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 



Jenkins, Mr., 176 

Johnson, Samuel, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 

26, 64, 102, 104, 115, 125, 156, 

173, 184, 194, 202, 218, 221, 324, 

351, 362, 366 
Jonson, Ben, 58, 59, 66, 72, 20S, 

214, 223, 332, 333, 355, 376, 377 
Journey, On Going a, 163, 359 
Julius, Pope, 89 
Junius, xvi, 104, 194, 255, 346 

Kant, 246, 381 

Kean, Edmund, xlvi, 8, 318 

Keats, John, xxxi, loi, 139, 353, 

355 
Kemble, John Philip, 7, 8, 318 
King, Thomas, 208, 372 
Kneller, Godfrey, 94, 213, 341, 

374 

La Fontaine, 226 

Lamb, Charles, ix, xix, xxii, xxxix, 
78, 159, 167, 196, 304, 315, 336, 
343' 358' 361, 373' 374. 376, 379, 
382, 390, 391 ; Rosamond Gray, 
28, 326 

Lamb, Mary, xxiv, xliv, 378 

Langton, Bennet, 25, 324 

La Roche, 27, 326 

Lauder, William, 24, 324 

Lauderdale, Earl of, 105, 346 

Lawrence, Thomas, 252 

Le Fevre, 27, 326 

Leibnitz, Gottfried, 223 

Lely, Peter, 251 

Leonardo da Vinci, 90, 225, 339, 

'379 
Lewis, Monk, 190, 208, 367 
Lillo, George, 42, 328 
Lilly, Mr., 16, 322 
Liston, John, 207, 209 
Living to One'' s- Self, On, 127, 352 
Locke, John, 99, 212, 213, 224, 

343 
Longinus, 252, 383 
Lord Mayor, the, 36, 43, 327 
Lounger, the, 27, 326 
Lucan, 248, 383 

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 73, 333 
Mackenzie, Henry, 103, 326 



Mackintosh, James, 181, 182, 365 
Alan of Feeling, 28, 326 
Man of the World, 28, 326 
Mandeville, Bernard de, 265, 320 
Manichean, 295, 388 
Mansfield, Lord, 219, 376 
Marlborough, Duke of, 16, 322 
Marlowe, Christopher, 59, 66, 76, 

99, 156, 222, 322, 335, 358, 377 
Mars, Mademoiselle, 209, 373 
Marston, John, 59, 66, 332 
Marville, Vignuel de, no, 348 
Meny Englajid, 197, 369 
Metastasio, 313, 392 
Middleton, Thomas, 59, 66, 332 
Millar, Andrew, 94, 341 
Milton, John, xvi, 22, 24, 48, 65, 

68, 103, 104, 108, 135, 140, 194, 

312 
Minerva press, 97, 342 
Mirror, the, 27, 326 
Mitre, the, 25 
Moliere, Jean Baptiste, 36, 206, 

327 
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 

220, 232, 233, 376, 380 
Montaigne, Michel, 10, 12, 13, 21, 

226, 319 
Moore, Edward, 42, 328 
Moore, Thomas, 233, 301, 380 
Morgan, Lady, 94, 341 
Munden, Joseph, 208, 372 
Murillo, 178, 364 
Murray, Mr., 186 

Napoleon, 103, 131, 345, 349, 353, 

382 
Newton, Isaac, 20, 212, 213, 232, 

324 
Nicholson, William, 130, 353 
Ninon de L'Enclos, 226, 378 
North, Thomas, 72, 333 
Northcote, James, 89, 339 

Oldfield, Mrs., 16, 322 

Olla podrida, 288, 388 

Opie, John, 89, 339 

Ossian, 53, 57, 247, 331 

Otway, Thomas, 66, 224, 282, 377; 

Venice Preserved, 332 
Ovid, 12, 333 



INDEX 



\97 



Paley, William, 185, 366 

Paine, Tom, 184, 366 

Parsons, William, 208, 372 

Pascal, 253, 384 

Past and Future, On the, 142, 

356 
Paul and Virginia, xvii, 169, 187, 

361, 367 
Peel's coffee-house, 247, 382 
People, On Disagreeable, 259, 385 
Periodical Essayists, On the,g,T,iC) 
Persian Letters, 26, 325 
Persons one ivould Wish to have 

Seen, Of, 2\z, 373 
Petrarch, 73, 248, 375, 3S2 
Phillips, E., 220, 376 
Philoctetes, 51, 330 
Pieces of eight, 158, 358 
Plato, 37, 246, 328 
Pleasure of Painting, On the, 82, 

336 

Poetry in General, On, 35, 327 

Poet's-Corner, the, 132 

Poets, My First Acquaintance with, 

175. 363 
Poole, Tom, 191, 367 
Pope, Alexander, 11, 16, 43, 50, 

102, 153, 194, 218, 232, 248, 354, 

375 
Pope, Miss, 208 
Poussin, Gasper, 192, 368 
Poussin, A'icolas, On a Landscape 

of, 107, 346 
Pritchard, Mrs., 221, 376 

Quarterly Pevieie<, 138, 253, 355 
Queen'' s Matritnonial-Ladder, 257, 

385 
Quin, James, 221, 376 

Rabelais, 206, 226, 391 
Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 97, 342 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 58 
Raphael, 47, 92, iii, 113, 194, 225, 
233' 235, 251, 288, 294 ; the Car- 
toons, 19, 323 
Reading Neiv Books, On, 242, 381 
Reading Old Books, On, 94, 340 
Rembrandt, 46, 85, 86, 87, 92, 113, 

225, 236, 338 
Returne from Parttassus, 78, 336 



Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 57, 87, 91, 
107, 115, 153,221, 225, 331, 338, 

347 
Reynolds, Mrs., 218, 376 
Richardson, Jonathan, 89, 339 
Richardson, Samuel, xvi, 52, 103, 

127, 128, 194, 220, 232, 330, 353 
Rickman, John, xvi 
Rifaccimentos, 95, 341 
Robinson, Crabb, xvi, xvii, xxvii, 

xxx 
Robinson, Long, 200, 370 
Rochefoucauld, xvi, 226 
Ronsard, Pierre de, 73, 334 
Rosa, Salvator, 33, 326 
Rossini, 252, 383 
Roubigne, 28, 326 
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, xvi, 99, 

100, 121, 133, 144, 145, 169, 177, 

226, 278, 343, 350, 353, 356, 360, 

362, 386 
Rowe, Mr., 175, 176, 363 
Rowley, William, 59, 332 
Royal Exchange, 19, 323 
Rubens, 85, 90, 112, 113, 225, 235 

Sadler's Wells, 251, 383 
St. Neot's, 169, 361 
Saturnalian licence, 78, 336 
Sarto, Andrea del, 90, 339 
Schiller, 90, loi, 120, 237, 340, 344, 

35O' 3S3 
Scott, ix, 94, 192, 242, 245, 268, 

340, 356, 368, 381 
Seven Champions, 18, 323 
Shaftesbury, Lord, 13, 91, 289, 

320, 340, 388 
Shakespeare, 42, 50, 53, 58, 59, 
61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 72, 74, 75, 77, 
102, 138, 140, 194, 206, 213, 222, 
223, 227, 232, 247, 250, 274, 277, 
294 
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 267 
Shenstone, William, 136, 253, 354, 

384 
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 287, 

388 
Shippen, William, 11, 319 
Sick Chumber, The, 308, 391 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 58, 77, 185, 213, 

335. 366 



398 



SELECTIONS FROM HAZLITT 



Simmons, 208 

Skeffington, Honourable Mr., 92, 

340 
Smith, Adam, 179 
Smollett, Tobias, xvi, 341, 372 
Snake, Mr. Liberal, 297, 389 
Sophocles, 351 
South, Robert, 184, 365 
Southey, ix, xxii, 186, 190, 196 
Spectator, the, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 

102, 202, 267, 286, 320, 344, 385 
Spence, Joseph, 153, 357 
Spenser, Edmund, 48, 58, 74, 217, 

314 
Stafford, Marquis of, 114 
Steele, Richard, 14, 17, 18, 19, 224 
Steen, Jan, 88, 339 
Sterne, Laurence, 27, 115, 142, 

165, 230, 282, 350, 356 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, Iv, Ivii, 

Ix, 357. 359. 391 
Stewart, Dugald, 224, 377 
Stowe, John, 106, 346 
Style, Oh Familiar, 155, 358 
Suckling, John, 77, 335 
Suett, Richard, 208, 372 
Suit-Dial, On a, 274, 386 
Surrey, Earl of, 335 
Swift, Jonathan, 207, 224, 232, 255 

Tasso, Torquato, 72, 333 

Tatler, the, xvi, 14, 16, 19, 20, 102, 

320 
Taylor, Jeremy, 194 
Taylor, Thomas, 138, 246, 247, 

355' 381 
Temple Bar, 14, 321 
Temple Church, 14, 116, 350 
Temple, Sir William, 13, 94, 320, 

341 
Thackeray, William, 354 
Thomson, James, 194, 224, 261, 

288, 377, 385 
Thurloe, John, 94, 341 



Thucydides, 106, 347 
Tilbury, A., 163, 360 
Titian, 47, 62, 90, 113, 217, 225, 

340 
Tooke, Home, 223 
Trumpet, the, 15, 321 
Tucker, Abraham, xxiii, 91, 122, 

340, 351 
Turenne, Marshall, 16, 322 

Ugolino, Count, 57, 331 

Vanbrugh, John, 16, 322 
Vandyke, 225, 251 
Velasquez, 178, 364 
Virgil, 12, 141, 333 
Voltaire, 252, 291, 384 

Walton, Izaac, 202, 265, 385 
Webster, John, 59, 66, 132, 222, 

332, 353 
Wedgwood, Josiah, 365 
W^edgwood, Tom, 181, 182, 183, 

365 
West, Benjamin, iio, 348 
W^estall, William, 169, 361 
Westminster Abbey, 19, 323, 349 
Weston, Thomas, 221, 376 
IVJiole Duty of Man, the, 5, 318 
Wilkes, John, 25, 325 
Wilkie, David, 134, 354 
Will's coffee-house, 15, 322 
Wilson, Richard, 133, 337, 354 
Winterslow, 127, 352, 357, 390 
Wolstonecraft, Mary, 181, 182, 

365 ^ 

Wordsworth, William, ix, xvi, 65, 
105, 181, 187, 188, 189, 190, 193, 
194, 255, 282, 346, 347, 353, 367, 
390 ; the Lyrical Ballads, xvii, 
102, 188 

World, the, 26, 102, 325 

Young, Edward, 119, 350 






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